@oplik0 said in Some questions :
I, for one, will agree with @cregox that one could argue that NodeBB isn't free, because you're paying for hosting it.
However, in the same vein, none of the service he mentioned are.
Well HE mentioned that none of them were free. But hosting something possibly costing you money is unrelated to the thing itself being free.
There are three key problems.... the one is that we are associating the cost of an action with the cost of an item, that can't work. That requires all kinds of illogical connections. For example, can jewelry not be free (or even exist) because it doesn't "do" anything? It just sits there. So since it does nothing, it can't be free? Clearly it can. NodeBB (and millions of other products) are free regardless of whether you want to run them, try to run them, etc. They simple "are free", even if you don't know about them, many of them are already free to you today. They are free regardless of anything you may or may not wish to use them in conjunction with.
The second is that there is an assumption that hosting is an intrinsic component of NodeBB. It's certainly the most common use example, but it is not the only function. NodeBB can be run locally on existing resources, for free. It can be read without being run, studied, copied, forked, or stored. Or just have ownership of. All those things are free use cases. Not that that matters, clearly, but it's important to note that hosting isn't a foregone conclusion.
The third is the notion that hosting can't be free. It is, in fact, often free. Rarely good hosting, but lots and lots of hosting is free. I actually run a provider that does free hosting, including of NodeBB (not for you people, it's for special cases, don't come asking for free hosting, lol). So it's almost important to note that just because the NodeBB team themselves don't make the hosting free, doesn't mean that it isn't. The same is try of the customization, find an intern willing to work for free, and that's free too.