This blog is moving to my own server, running from my house, and will now use entirely free software. Bloggers have recently learned that you can't rely on others to provide you with a server, and that proprietary blogging software leaves bloggers vulnerable to the licensing whims of its proprietors.
Granted, this site is run on a server I pay for, but don't operate myself, and so isn't going anywhere so long as I pay the bill. In addition, Movable Type continues to be offered at no cost for personal use, with just one author and one blog, like this site. However, I'd rather not pay for a server when I can run one from home at no cost, and I'd rather run my blog on software that guarantees me my freedom to continue using it, rather than software that can be snatched out from under me whenever the proprietors decide they want to raise the rent.
I will leave all the content on this site intact, to preserve any existing links, but all the content has also been moved over to the new location. Comments will continue to be possible for all entries there, but are being gradually shut off here. (b2evolution, my new GPL'd blog software, made transferring the entries and comments amazingly easy!)
Finally, a large purpose of the Internet is for each individual to be capable of making the Internet bigger. Not just bigger in terms of content, although people can use no-cost web page sites (hosted by others) to add their contributions to the Internet, but bigger in terms of actual hardware connected to the network. Everyone on the Internet should be able to easily run their own server and thereby make the Internet bigger. I think my totally free software solution is almost within the grasp of the non-technical user, and would like to find time to write up a detailed How-To that would demonstrate this. Unfortunately, writing a How-To that's actually useful to the true newbie is amazingly time consuming, and I don't have time to do that now.
Instead, I'll sumarize here the steps I took to make the Internet bigger: