I would hope that another entity such as a camera gear manufacturer would step up and take over hosting.
If Nikon, Sony, Tamron, etc could take over, it'd still benefit everyone IMO.
The Crazy thisis that Amazon is one of the largest "Hosting" companies with AWS. This is a nit. Surely they could host, and provide some admin coverage, to allow the Forums to continue, and on the volume alone would generate enough income/sales to cover the cost. Ugh.
As has been noted, Amazon's "core" business, on-line retail and devices, is losing money big time: $25B in their last annual report. It's AWS that's keeping Amazon in the black. DPR doesn't contribute anything meaningful to AMZ's bottom line.
Hogan noted that just keeping the site up would be extremely difficult - DPR is database driven and databases are notoriously hard to archive. Looking at DPR's staff, at least 3 full-time programmers are needed to maintain the site. Currently the site is estimated to cost AMZ $3+M/year without the sales volume or potential sales growth to justify it.
The only recourse would be to charge for forum membership...which is the kiss of death for the kind of traffic the site enjoys. But it would reveal what the core support for DPR's product is.
Personally, I would NOT want a manufacturer-hosted DPR. There are too many of those and they all tend to be tightly managed for favorable content. AMZ apparently engaged in a bit of that on this site as well.
