The NSF is now playing with high-bandwidth experiments and keeping the national super computers connected. The WWW operates on interconnectedness. I wouldn't mind other people pointing to us as some already do. I won't hesitate to talk to a business on the net or individual where we can trade links. Of course you won't see Microsoft pointing to Novell, but you could see Novell pointing to people that use their product or make add-ons to Novell products and these people pointing back.
Some people are willing to trade, some people want to charge.
The people that want to charge aren't in the majority at the moment, but may be in the future. Unless someone can show me that they're going to bring me or my client more traffic than a like link on my pages, I generally decline. Otherwise, I look at what they can provide and advise the customer whether it's worth it or not. There are an awful lot of individuals that make their favorite pages into a page for friends and strangers that provide more traffic than some commercial sites. This is a fake email address.