We will consider in the long-term having the site fund hardware for running free/libre/open services that respect privacy etc. i.e. fully ethical services. It won't be our primary focus.
I'm not dogmatically opposed to ad-funded hardware but I am otherwise opposed to ad-funded hardware. I think ads are generally obnoxious. "Charity" implies altruism, donating to help others. We are not making a system for charity. We're making a system for many people to come together to fund things of mutual interest. Charity is just not the right word. If you mean "voluntary" then yes, we're voluntary while maximizing the incentives to volunteer, in a way much moreso than anything currently. Google and Facebook would not be so successful on ads alone if they were not otherwise monopolistic in their business approaches. No matter what the funding mechanisms, monopolies will always have better funding. Anyway, yeah, it's a very good point about hardware, and one we hadn't considered as much. My view right now is that it could be a stage two, a spin-off or connected subsection in the long-term. Otherwise, I don't actually like hardware use being gratis. It encourages waste. Server farms today are one of the most wasteful, most environmentally destructive, energy intensive industries in the developed world. The reason they are so wasteful is because all the incentives are for running them at max speed with max redundancy. It would be better for people to choose low-definition video over HD for example for many purposes. It is not entirely bad to encourage conservation of hardware resources. That said, as long as we're competing with Google, we obviously need to compete technically or few will use the Free/Libre alternatives. Thanks again for the thoughts. There are many things to keep working on… Cheers, Aaron -- Aaron Wolf wolftune.com On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 10:02 PM, Patrick Anderson <[email protected]>wrote: > > asking how Snowdrift.coop will *pay* for the free software is not all > all a delicate question. > > Well, I am not asking how we will pay for the SOFTware, > > I'm asking how we will pay for the HARDware needed to *host* that software. > > > > Check out the site. > > I made an account. > > I'm worried the goals seem to require charity. > > Google and Facebook don't require charity... > > http://Jitsi.org is already written and could probably replace Google > Hangouts if we could only pay for the hardware to host it... > > Will you allow advertisements to pay for the HARDware? > > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.freeculture.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss > FAQ: http://wiki.freeculture.org/Fc-discuss > >
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