Hi there, Dnia poniedziałek, 14 maja 2012 o 18:06:28 Patrick Anderson napisał(a): > > 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.
Yes. However, this can be done in a way that does not preclude businesses from building services on that. > Our lack of understanding on this subject must not stop us from > tackling this most important issue. Yes indeed, it mustn't. > 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. Interesting idea. > 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). I would agree we cannot leave that to corporations (as I believe corporations need to be either completely dissolved or some serious restrictions should be imposed on them[1]). However, I believe we could leave it (in some part, at least) to the private sector. [1] http://rys.io/en/55 > We cannot leave this to the charity of a few of us to fund and > maintain a small set of servers. No, but we maybe can ask the users to chip in (voluntarily, or by "buying" a certain service upgrade, for example). I've seen at least a few examples of such a "business model" working. > Charity cannot scale to compete with Google, Skype, Amazon, etc. Maybe it's not a question of scaling charity up to compete with corporations; maybe it's a question of scaling down corporations. But that's for a whole new discussion, I guess. > 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. I too believe so. > 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. That is true. > 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). That is also true, but we (NGOs) have what they do not - a very high level of public trust. We could build on that. > 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. Yes, hardware sharing would be helpful. > 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. Let's not go to housing and health care just now. Let's stick with free software and user control over data... ;) -- Pozdrawiam Michał "rysiek" Woźniak Fundacja Wolnego i Otwartego Oprogramowania
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