When I see an article like this one in eweek, I always wonder about how the people doing this cool thing will make enough money (or any money) so they can continue to do these cool things.

Basically they are using the Google Search APIs to ferret out sites on the Internet that are hosting malware.  I think this is great, but the article didn’t say how this cool thing would be actually used to benefit the world.  If they notified site owners that they had malware and pointed out exactly what was where then there is no profit in this (Do I sound like a Ferengi here?) which means it isn’t likely to be sustainable.  But what if they notified sites the first time (civil minded) and offered to keep them updated in the future for a nominal annual fee.

I find that many great ideas languish and die because people want to hold onto the open source kind of dream and for some reason either don’t see how to help the community in a self sustaining way or are just worried about being accused of just being out to make a buck.