Norboten runs on your own machine, and that part is free for ever — the labs, the images, the grading and the TUI need nothing from anyone. A donation keeps the part that lives on the internet running: the consultant, the ratings, the live sessions and this site.
One VPS: this site, the API, the ratings, the live sessions and the local model the consultant runs on. No hosted model is billed to anyone.
Every golden image is built and re-gated on real VMs before it ships, and the bandwidth that carries them to learners.
A lab is only merged after the gate proves it can be solved, on every image it claims. That gate runs on machines that cost money.
A lab is a directory: faults, checks, hints, a reference solution. The gate proves it is solvable before it can merge.
A lab that stopped working after an upstream update is the most useful bug report this project can get.
No amount unlocks labs, hints, ratings or anything else: every learner gets the same Norboten, and a lab that only paying people can solve would defeat the point of the thing. Nobody is listed on the site unless they ask to be, and nothing here is advertising space.
If the hosted side ever cannot pay for itself, it stops and the TUI keeps working — the labs live in the repository and run offline, which is the whole reason it is built that way round.