On 06/08/2012 07:19 PM, Don Fanning wrote:
Since when is it detrimental to make money? I'd much pay a little and have a high Quality of Service than beg and plead for free bandwidth that can be taken away easily. If it lends to the adage "when all else fails - amateur radio" then maybe it's worth putting in a couple of coins. Amateur Radio has and will very likely always will be a service without compensation. But there is no reason to take it to the extreme of anti-capitalism.
Making money is OK and paying for service is also OK, but sometimes you can for various reasons get access to resources that you cannot pay on commercial conditions to do things that you could otherwise only dream of. I see no reason why these paradigms could coexist. Just diversity in business models. It is mostly about pooling resources and it is of course something in it for all involved, but not always money. Perhaps we do not necessarily have to take everything to the extreme of capitalism either.