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Considerations When Accepting Bandwidth Donations?
dnotj asks: "I'm involved in a project that is growing fast and is going to soon outgrow it's current hosting location. I've had a couple of offers for donating bandwidth (and servers in one case). Basically free colocation or dedicated servers. Since this isn't a revenue generating project, it's going to be necessary to migrate this project and it's related website to a location with adequate bandwidth. What kinds of questions should I be asking these generous organizations that make these offers? I just want to make sure I cover all my bases before jumping on one of these offers."
First things first: Ask them what, if any, conditions there are to their "gifts".
If they are providing the hosting or bandwidth, be sure to read the small print! Make sure that you aren't signing away any rights that you might care about. I'm not just talking about copyrights and trademarks, I mean things like the right to publish your work elsewhere, change hosting services or servers at any time, how and when access is provided to the server, if and when backups are done (started/completed), what you can expect in case of an unacceptably long downtime, etc.