[02] WHAT IS THE BENEFIT OF HAVING A JOURNAL, GALLERY, ET CETERA SDF?

     The single most important aspect of this all is that you and
     you alone own and retain all rights to your content.  There are
     many commercial sites on the INTERNET these days and while they
     offer you services without taking your money, they aren't 
     necessarily free.  In nearly all cases you are forced to accept
     an end user agreement that releases all rights to what you put
     on their servers.  You may not care about this but most SDF
     members realize that in the long term giving up rights to your
     photos, music, artwork, thoughts and ideas in exchange for 
     "free hosting" will most likely be something you'll regret.

     Another aspect is that SDF allows you access to several key areas
     that the majority of commercial operations restrict:

     1) You have access to your logfile.  This documents every 
        request made for your URL.  MOTD logfiles persist for a year
        and are rolled over on January 1st 00:00:01.
   
     2) You have access to your database.  You can log directly into
        your database and manipulate your tables and data yourself. 

     3) You have access to the framework.  All software packages used
        in the MOTD membership are available to MOTD members to make
        updates, changes and fixes.  Likewise, members can submit 
        their own software for other members to use and collaborate
        on.  The main benefit of this is the ability to quickly update
        source distributions when security flaws are discovered.

     Source distributions are kept in /sys/motd which is available from
     all systems on the SDF network.  Files are versioned via the RCS.