It's so easy to forget how much of the internet is free. It's easy to forget that each website is so often run as a labour of love by maybe one or two people. It's easy to assume that someone else is looking after your work. It's easy to forget that these people have lives outside of the net.

cv.org, fnm.com, setlists.com, db.etree.org, everything2.com. All of the blogs you read. Most of the software you're probably using right now. Free.

When I've created sites, well used and popular sites, and then needed to pass them on for whatever reason, I've warned, I've requested, I've tried to give away for free. But nothing happens until the site is gone. No-one believes anything until it happens.

I suspect Dave's actions got weblogs.com a new home in less than a week when otherwise it may have taken months.

weblogs.com was little more than a free example of how cool Manilla sites could be. Beyond that is was free hosting. For four years. It's hard for me to think of a free site that involved free hosting that has lasted that long without being plastered over by advertisements. I understood how cool it was in 2000 when I signed up, investigating ways to backup my blog, knowing it could go away any day.

I forgot for a few minutes when I saw my weblog was down. I was annoyed. I wondered where the warning was. I think it really points out how good a service weblogs.com was, how good a product Manila is that this has caused such a huge fuss. A completely free service that has been running almost constantly for four years and people forgot it was free, forgot it was running on a server in some guys house.

The problem with online communities is centralisation of data. One place to put all your data. One place for it all to go bye bye. My biggest problem with so many community input sites (eg. CDDB) are that so often the data is locked up and so easily removed from the face of the earth. Every data related site needs an easy method to download/backup (weblogs.com had it, I didn't use it often enough). I'm not saying that's easy or inexpensive.

As a random example, my URLs/domains and email are autoforwarded by MyDomain.com. For free. I couldn't think of a more important service and I couldn't think of any single action that would screw me harder than to kill my domains. No websites. No band email. No band websites. No personal email. About a year ago it happened. But I didn't move my domains. I calculated that the problem they had was just as likely to happen to any other service I moved to. I also calculated that any commercial service may well be more likely to go under. A site written off as advertising and patched together has more staying power than one that must turn a profit, and increase that profit from year to year.

gmail. hotmail. yahoo groups. ICQ.