Well, not really. But I am curious about something from the guys that run web hosts on their dedicated servers.
We all have "freebies" for friends or families, or for people we hope are going to be nice and send business our way. I was just wondering how many of these other people have on their machine(s). I know it's pretty easy to waste 10 or 12 ip's (good thing I don't pay for them) on these things.

I do this, of course in the long run its not worth it, for me at least, I just feel bad saying no to friends, but I have stopped doing it for people.

I let about 5 friends use my server for free, I put no limits on them and no contract and no payment, I dont expect anything in return, its something I consider I have and something i can share with good friends, as I always believe, if you are not selfish people repay you in strange ways that you could have never considered possible.

My personal view is that you should have them pay for the bandwidth they're using... but of course if they're using insignificant amounts then that means basically free anyway.

Hosting someone's collection of porn movies would get expensive after a while even if they are a friend of yours; certainly don't try to make a profit off of them, but don't allow them to burn many GB of bandwidth at your expense either.

I have about 5 friends that I host on my box. 2 of which pay me and 1 of which hasn't paid me in 3 months. If i do host my friends, I usually charge them less than I would for other people.

Our president believes in free services for friends. One of them has a server co-located here for free, he's hosting a number of gratis web sites and giving friends free Internet access/email. Even his ex-girlfriend has free email and hosting...

I'd recommend drawing the line when it comes to business sites, or any that might be high-traffic or of questionable legality, but as long as they aren't using up too many resources or costing you money, it never hurts to comp a few friends some services-you never know when you'll need a favor from them.

I also give my friends some free server space but I also host gaming releated sites if they run our ads on their page.