[p2p-research] What should a Community do with Profit? (was: personal server technology)

[Patrick Anderson]

M. Fioretti wrote:
>
> A VPS can certainly be "community owned", and so can a datacenter. The
> problem today is that there is little or no demand for "community
> owned" datacenters aimed just to provide VPSs for "personal server"
> usage, at least not enough to make them economically affordable.

Sorry, but what do you mean by "economically affordable"?

Are you saying Costs would be higher than Capitalist owned, or are you
saying Profits would be too low for investors to bother?


> Patrick Anderson wrote:
>> What should a Community do with Profit?
>
> this is a general question, which has nothing to do with clouds and
> which I'm not qualified to answer, I think. I suggest that you simply
> ignore it in the context of this thread. The point here is *if* you
> need a cloud in the first place, then *if* you really need it *if* you can build or buy
> your very own one.

The treatment of Profit is profoundly important because of the impacts
it has on our systems, including whether or not we can grow in a
'sustainable' and 'fair' manner or whether it will cause
centralization of control and loss of sovereignty for the end users as
Capitalism tends to do.