|
|||
There's no such thing as "free". Everything has to be paid for. The practical meaning of "free service" is a service someone else pays for, and if it's something you're going to be relying on (like an email address you'll be giving to dozens of people, or an essential tool you will rely on to update your web site, or even the system hosting your web site), then you better find out who is doing the paying, why they're doing it, and whether they're going to stop someday. Otherwise you might grow to rely on it only to have it vanish out from under you when the money runs out. When I decided to set up my own server to host USS Clueless, I never even considered using Blogger. I had heard of it and I know that a lot of people use it and get good results. By all accounts it is a very fine tool. But the problem with it is that even if my site were hosted on my own server, I would need to use Pyra's server to update it. If Pyra's server goes away for any reason, no matter why, then I'd be stuck. So I never even looked at it. I went with Greymatter instead for the simple reason that Greymatter is installed on and runs directly on my own server. (The fact that it was being given away was actually unimportant; had Greymatter not existed I probably would have purchased Manila, and if Greymatter had cost money I would have paid.) If Noah Grey goes offline, Greymatter will continue to run on regulus.denbeste.nu. In fact, Blogger has had two near-death experiences recently which shut down updates of hundreds of blogs, though it survived them and came back up. It's not obvious it will survive the third, though, which will probably come soon; Pyra still doesn't have a viable business model. BlogVoices did die, killing off the current discussion system used by thousands of blogs and wiping out their discussion histories -- which didn't affect me because I purchased UBBS which also runs stand-alone on regulus and which will continue to run even if InfoPop goes OOB. In the new new economy, customers of a company should be concerned that their suppliers have a sustainable business model which guarantees profits to the supplier. Otherwise the supplier won't be there when the customer really needs them. (discuss) |
|||
