John, Craig,
how do you explain the services of file hosting? By those services millions of persons free-load pictures, videos, text, GBs of data, etc.. I think that what I asked is quite similar, that is the use of a piece of remote hardware where to have free software installed. The difference in my opinion is in the fact that I implicitly asked also for the use of a free operating system, but not in the hardware or in its maintenance.
On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 3:56 AM, John R Pierce <pierce@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 08/06/11 4:40 PM, David Johnston wrote:
indeed, especially a service like hosting that has significant ongoing
hard costs involved... a colocated server requires power, air
conditioning, network traffic and transit fees, management, physical
security, and the cost of the hardware itself, which has typically a 3-5
year lifespan (in 3 years, newer hardware can do so much more work its
often not cost effective to keep the old hardware online).how do you explain the services of file hosting? By those services millions of persons free-load pictures, videos, text, GBs of data, etc.. I think that what I asked is quite similar, that is the use of a piece of remote hardware where to have free software installed. The difference in my opinion is in the fact that I implicitly asked also for the use of a free operating system, but not in the hardware or in its maintenance.
On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 3:56 AM, John R Pierce <pierce@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 08/06/11 4:40 PM, David Johnston wrote:
The bottom line is I would not expect to find any individual or company willing or able to offer such a service, to the general public, for free. And it is a service you are requesting as opposed to a product like PostgreSQL. A product is more likely to be improved by the people using it compared to a service, and those improvements are likely to make it back into the original.
On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 4:25 AM, Craig Ringer <ringerc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 7/08/2011 1:08 AM, Scott Ribe wrote:A bit OT, but....
After open source for the software, we will wait for open resource for the hardware (this is just a first example http://www.arduino.cc/, even if of different nature).While the plans may be free, the actual hardware sure as hell won't be.
Arduino is not so much a "will" as an "is". It's in wide-spread use and has even been adopted for the base of the new Android peripheral development system - the Android Open Accessory Development Kit.
http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/usb/adk.html
I struggle to see any connection between Arduino and PostgreSQL, though. They're very different kinds of free/open source, as software "is" its specification and can be distributed at no cost, but you can't just download a hardware device and use it.
--
Craig Ringer
