Sustainability
“Lotsawa House must confront the threat of obsolescence. Our technical advisor, Dominik Schloesser, encourages us to use file formats that are as simple and common as possible and to avoid the temptation to resort to proprietary solutions, which are less likely to be readable in future. We are also working on strategies for backing up and preserving files as securely as possible and reducing our carbon footprint.”
Digital Sustainability
Lotsawa House stores its source texts in simple, well-specified formats: Markdown for prose texts, and a CSV-based format for liturgical texts in verse. All text is stored in Unicode, using the standard UTF-8 encoding. These formats are simple enough, and Markdown is enough of an industry standard, to ensure that they will still be readable in the long term. All source files are stored in a Git repository, which is again a major industry standard ensuring that not only the current contents but the history of the archive should be well preserved into the future. The Git repository is backed by a major cloud infrastructure provider, and is easy to copy, share and migrate. Within the repository, the source texts themselves are kept separate from the metadata files that are used to publish them on the site, associating them with an author, a topic, a translator, a URL, etc.; this ensures a good level of separation of concerns.
The bulk of the website is created using a customized static site generator; only the search function requires a small database, which can be easily regenerated. This keeps both hosting costs and technical complexity to a minimum, and ensures that the server is secure and efficient. PDF and ebook generation are done on-demand; since they are entirely automated, the cost of producing them and keeping them up to date is also minimal.
Financial Sustainability
As a result of its efficient technology choices, Lotsawa House has minimal maintenance costs. Thanks to our regular monthly supporters on Patreon and additional support from individual donations and institutional grants, we can continue to grow the website in accordance with our vision and long-term goals. All financial decisions prioritize the long-term viability of the website and the material it contains.
Environmental Sustainability
Website Carbon Calculator (www.websitecarbon.com) gives lotsawahouse.org a carbon rating of D, which is bettter than the global average and compares favorably to many partner sites offering a similar service (84000, Treasury of Lives, Buddhist Digital Resource Center and Khyentse Vision Project all have an F-rating, below the global average). Still, we are committed to further reducing our carbon footprint, and we will update this page in future outlining the measures being taken to do so.
Lotsawa House is registered in the UK as a Community Interest Company (#14358325), a category of company which exists primarily to benefit a community or with a view to pursuing a social purpose, with all profits having to be used for this purpose.