And that's why I have commented that I realize that at some point if a site gets large enough, it will generally be commercialized in some manner. That can either be with ads, sponsorships from niche related businesses or even subscription. But once that happens, it's no longer a "free" site as in some manner the end user is going to be forced with dealing with additional burden of ads or similar. But that might also be a difference in how you and I define the word free.
My point was, it seems that way to many are more concerned with how they can make money now than how providing a service. I have to wonder if that's the difference between having the internet be a core life involvement like it is now for society and it being something new and world opening when it started out for use by the public back in my era.
But for some, the philosophy hasn't changed that much since the days of the BBS other than more people were interested in participation in a long form format and they aren't today. I remember my first "real" system to run a multi-node BBS cost me around $4000, and that was 1985 dollars, which would be around $11,700 in todays money, and that was a direct payment cost. And that didn't include the 3 telephone lines at around $12 each for each node. And I was not the only one to do such... and most of us (other than the porn related sites) were free to use as we ran the sites because we enjoyed it.
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