Hi, I'm sev. I run byz.org, with a lot of help from all of the denizens of byz.
It's recently come to my attention that I haven't ever fully explained to anyone why I run byz.
Byz is primarily a place where people who have something to say can say it outside the auspices of commercial advertising, where nobody but us really decides what we can and cannot say (with some basic exceptions noted in the byz TOS).
Byz is an experiment in a small, geographically-diverse community.
Byz was begun in the name of enabling speech -- originally for people who were losing their internet accounts because they were graduating from school, and after the web took off, to enable people to have web pages that they wouldn't be able to host elsewhere for whatever reason (cost, content, requirement of anonymity, whatever).
Byz happens because I and some of our users prefer a small server with personal service -- and all the drawbacks that implies -- to a large impersonal server. Each has its place; while byz does not get things done as efficiently as on a commercial ISP, we're more flexible about special needs. It can be either frustration or freedom to be told, "if you want that program, compile it yourself and we'll install it" -- byz is heavily populated with those of us who consider it freedom.
Byz happens because I feel that it's important to have a space for personal webpages run by queer- and queer-friendly folk.
Byz happens because we want something like byz, and before we made byz happen, there was nothing like byz.