In my opinion, there is something fundamentally wrong with people that think that it is alright to sell advertising space on their freely hosted community blog site. I have absolutely no problem with the community owners selling ads (hey, it costs time and money to host these sites), but when a community member sells ad space (either thru something like Google Ads, or takes money for writing a blog post) on a site that they do not have to pay for (either thru money, or donating time to admin/develop the site) it really rubs me the wrong way. Most free community sites have terms of service that would bar a blogger from placing ads on their page. But, guys like Scott Watermasysk who are just too nice, and didn’t require people to sign off on terms of service agreements for the old DotNetWeblogs, and certain people have decided to take advantage of him. Yes, I know that DotNetWeblogs has become Weblogs @ ASP.Net, and Scott no longer hosts the site on his server (Microsoft stepped up and now hosts it for him). Just because Scott doesn’t pay for the site out his pocket, and Microsoft has picked up the hosting bill, doesn’t make it right to sell advertising on a site that you don’t own. I think it speaks volumes about the morals of folks that do something like that.
To be honest, I know that I’m not 100% innocent. I got my start on Weblogs @ ASP.Net, and eventually left to create my own site. For a while I would put posts on both sites, and have the ASP.Net site point back to my site, with the hope that it would help drive readers to my site. I was very selective on what I did post on ASP.Net, but still, something just didn’t feel right. Eventually I came to terms with the feeling, and decided that it was really abusing Scott’s generosity, so, except for community news, I’ve stopped cross posting.
One of the reasons I’ve held back from upgrading from .Text to CommunityServer is because of the advertising I have on my site. At the moment, I make around $20 a month, which although it is very little money, it still is more than nothing. CommunityServer has a free Community License, and although it doesn’t specifically mention any restrictions regarding the use advertising on a site running CommunityServer on a Community License, the spirit of the Community License seems to be for nonprofit, community sites. CS does have a nice Standard Server license (currently at $179), which I would purchase before I switch my site CS. But if I want to use CS for some of the other sites I host, and place ads on them, I would really need to upgrade to the Professional Sever license (currently $899). Yes, some folks are getting away without buying the proper license, but I would sleep better knowing I did the right thing.
I’m purposely not linking to anyone, although I have run into a number of gulity blogs. They know who they are, and they are the ones that have to live with themselves. It may not bother them, but I have a hard time doing the same thing (but sometimes it takes me a while to actually realize what I’m doing, so I’m going to give them the benefit of re-evaluating their behavior without pointing them out publicly).