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It may be more than the _hosting_ cost, but what about the labour in actually generating that insight or maintaining and updating the content. Or what about recompense for, you know, providing such value in the first place?

'The bare minimum hosting cost' is a pretty poor bar for informational content.

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In the case of the Sheldon Brown website, the creator died 15 years ago. This is merely an archive of his work since no updates have been made since then.

John Allen has been updating the website since 2010. It seems like most people think the site should have been left alone, though.

Ah. I had no idea.

I wonder what Sheldon would have wanted. I was always under the impression that he saw it as a community service. Despite working at a bike shop he never seemed to push parts sales in his writings.

I took the parent's comment to be about recovering costs of operation, not supporting oneself.

I think its entirely possible to recover the costs of a hobby that does public good through donations. Making a reasonable wage (especially by software dev standards) is another matter entirely.

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