Inevitable and understandable! (Score 2)

It's a sad fact, but in the world of business, especially with plumetting ad revenue - free services just don't make financial sense. They make even less financial sense if they are _good quality_ free services which people would be willing to pay for!

I am the founder of a completely free technical support community - but it has no big business behind the site. The internet is great, because it allows 'community freebies' to be globally accessible [such as protonic.com], but it doesn't change the basic premise which investors want - a service that generates those greenbacks - and lots of them!

However, many internet startups have, and always will, provide time-limited free services in order to generate interest in the community...and some may even be able to sustain them by other means. You should always be able to find some enterprising company giving away a perfectly good quality service for free; but you need to expect to have to eventually either pay, or move on!

My (still extremely overvalued) 0.0042 euros.

- Emile
protonic.com : why not become a volunteer tech?