Free Content, Free Software, Free Hosting
eWeek reports that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales wants to facilitate the dissemination of free content by offering free software, free storage and free bandwidth.
Free usually means ad supported - but not in this case. Wales says his customers will be able to keep any advertising revenue their content generates. The new service will be called OpenServing.
Wikia, the commercial counterpart of the non-profit Wikipedia, recently received an undisclosed amount of funding from Amazon.com. When asked whether Amazon will supply web services for Wikia or OpenServing, Wales said potentially - but hosting wasn't a part of the investment deal.
MediaWiki will be the first free app available from OpenServing. WordPress and Drupal may follow, along with "hundreds of other software packages". Users will even have a single sign-on across all services.
Many hosting providers dismiss Google Apps for Domains and Microsoft's Office Live as proprietary platforms with limited functionality. Their customers want the flexibility to install whatever open source software they choose. In which case, might OpenServing's mission of creating a free software clearinghouse atop a free hosting platform represent a threat to traditional web hosting?
One of the Web hosting industry's longest-standing citizens, Isabel Wang is also a high-tech enthusiast. Through her WHIR blog, she examines the impact emerging Web technologies will have on the Web hosting business, and on the motivations of hosting consumers.
Isabel has been in the web hosting ... (Read full bio)
Read Back Issues of WHIR Magazine
October 2009 - Web Hosting's All Star Team
This has been, for us, one of the most interesting, exciting and challenging build-ups to an issue of the magazine yet, Web Hosting's All Star Team. The balloting process was our first experiment with a kind of user participation we're planning to do a lot more with in the months to come. We had thousands of ballots submitted, with hundreds of write-in suggestions and a demonstration of user engagement that has us feeling super positive about the project.
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July 2009 - What am I Worth?
One of the interesting luxuries of working on a project like the printed WHIR magazine is that it allows us to play with things like our point of view from one issue to the next. In recent months we've been giving added attention to the kind of practical and applicable advice aimed at smaller hosts and resellers. This issue carries on with that point of view, asking, in our cover story, "what am I worth?" It's a complicated question without a clear-cut answer.
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May 2009 - The Blueprint for a Small Web Host
I was a little surprised by how difficult it became to see this idea through. We set out to assemble a blueprint for a small hosting business, but butted up pretty quickly against the general impossibility of covering all the territory that was out there to be covered. The basic constraints of a printed magazine, and the less-than-infinite amount of time we had available forced us to face the fact that we could never produce an exhaustive guide to starting a hosting company.
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