Why now? I think there hasn't been any fresh non-forum content on the site for at least 12 years. Just didn't feel like paying hosting costs, or something else?
The biggest problem is supporting the legacy mod_perl stuff that the site is built on... you'd basically have to re-write the entire front end, or find a very bored perl monk to update the code base.
Basically to keep the ARS active, you'd need someone to take over the operations of the server & code. Maintaining it is a big deal.
Cost-wise, I could bring it down quite a bit if it was moved into a VPS (which we also offer), but again - it's a maintenance/care & feeding issue. This site is still running on Apache 1.3 here.
Someone would need to volunteer some senior technical skill for several weeks, and start... pretty much now."
