> I am willing to pay for domain registration and hosting if nobody else > volunteers, or no organisation can donate it, if there is a good design. (Of > course, donations would be welcome to help spread the cost!)
Sharing the costs, control and ownership of hosting is a fundamental and inescapable part of drawing users away from proprietary offerings. Our lack of understanding on this subject must not stop us from tackling this most important issue. We must design a GNU Mode of Production that allows us to cover the real costs of production (purchasing hardware, supplying electricity, repairing and operating those machines, etc.) while preserving freedom for every user. We cannot leave these details to corporations that intend to subjugate and overcharge us (where 'overcharge' also includes spying for the purpose of receiving more advertisement revenue). We cannot leave this to the charity of a few of us to fund and maintain a small set of servers. Charity cannot scale to compete with Google, Skype, Amazon, etc. We need a rigorous business plan that will allow us to cover the real costs of hosting Free Software while preserving User Freedom. This can certainly be done. Google, Skype, Amazon, and others charge *more* than the costs of production, and yet their users do not pay in any 'direct' manner. The FSF is already large enough to begin this. The FSF already hosts email (@fsf.org and @gnu.org) that could compete with Gmail. The FSF already hosts software projects (Savannah.GNU.org) that could compete with github.com We could compete with Facebook immediately (the Free Software is already written) if we understood how to cover the costs of *HOST* that software in such a way that those costs continue to be covered, even as those hardware requirements increase in scale. We are so weak on the 'business' side that we cannot even cover the basic costs of those operations, whereas our proprietary competitors cover all of their costs and *more* (in that they also receive Profit). We must devise a solution to sharing hardware or we will forever be in bondage to those corporations that know how to share (as in shareholders) hardware for the purpose of subjugating users. I have been working on this issue for a while now, and have discovered some of the parts of the solution. Once we realize how easy it is to co-own the Means of Production for hosting Free Software, it will be obvious the same can be done for the more important issues of food and housing and health-care. Sincerely, Patrick Anderson http://SourceFreedom.BlogSpot.com http://ImputedProduction.BlogSpot.com http://SocialSufficiencyCoalition.BlogSpot.com
