As a programmer, I am interested in how FR works. It looks like the site is using Linux/Apache, so I would guess that the database they are using here is MySql. Hopefully, not a flatfile system. Linux, Apache, PHP, and MySql are free software.
The big cost would be in the hosting bill/bandwidth per month at NTT America, Inc. Plus throw in switches, back up storage, a firewall, and whatever GUI server software they use, it can get expensive.
One problem I noticed is that this website does not take advantage of compression using Gzip or Deflate which would speed up access. Most modern websites use this easy to implement change.
Example:
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/*/index is not gzipped
Actual Page Size: 71.67 KB
Size if Gzipped: 22.15 KB
Potential Savings: 69.09%
Does that impact the load time?
It depends on what you value more - the bandwidth or the CPU load. All pages are dynamic. Even the main forum page updates counters once someone posts a comment. You would have to compress very frequently, and that is a bottleneck because you have to do that on your own CPU. On the other hand, bandwidth is scalable, and once it's out of your link (that you pay for) you don't care how it gets routed to any specific client.