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Show HN: My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs

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Re: Show HN: My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs

#11

Post by grey-area »

DeepSeaTortoise wrote: post #10

I'm in no way an expert, but IMO there is a major misconception in the free-ish software community that profit should be at most secondary to offering a fair and as good as sustainably possible product. I strongly disagree with this. IMO developers of free-ish as in freedom products OWE it, not only to themselves, but their community to be as profitable as possible within the rules they think that should be followed…

Profit is fine.

Profit from advertising is highly corrosive and corrupts everyone it touches (social networks, your tube, search etc etc).

Re: Show HN: My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs

#13

Post by BrenBarn »

DeepSeaTortoise wrote: post #10

I'm in no way an expert, but IMO there is a major misconception in the free-ish software community that profit should be at most secondary to offering a fair and as good as sustainably possible product. I strongly disagree with this. IMO developers of free-ish as in freedom products OWE it, not only to themselves, but their community to be as profitable as possible within the rules they think that should be followed…

It depends what you mean by "profit". If you mean "the developers/maintainers can pay the bills of a modest lifestyle", then yes, I think that's important. But often "profit" is used to refer to the idea of unlimited upside, that there are stocks, that the project will be sold, that some kind of sizable windfall is expected, etc. And that I think is to be avoided.

Re: Show HN: My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs

#14

Post by UnmappedStack »

DeepSeaTortoise wrote: post #10

I'm in no way an expert, but IMO there is a major misconception in the free-ish software community that profit should be at most secondary to offering a fair and as good as sustainably possible product. I strongly disagree with this. IMO developers of free-ish as in freedom products OWE it, not only to themselves, but their community to be as profitable as possible within the rules they think that should be followed…

This is a really interesting view, but I'm not sure I agree. So many amazing projects are truly free without the goal of profit yet their maintainers still do amazing work. I feel like part of the reason this works is because often the load is split between several maintainers (of which I hope to onboard soon, and have one or two offers already from people to contribute) and also the fact it's genuinely something enjoyable to work on (of course, to the extent it's not too stressful and overworked).

Re: Show HN: My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs

#16

Post by UnmappedStack »

grey-area wrote: post #11
DeepSeaTortoise wrote: post #10

I'm in no way an expert, but IMO there is a major misconception in the free-ish software community that profit should be at most secondary to offering a fair and as good as sustainably possible product. I strongly disagree with this. IMO developers of free-ish as in freedom products OWE it, not only to themselves, but their community to be as profitable as possible within the rules they think that should be followed…

Profit is fine. Profit from advertising is highly corrosive and corrupts everyone it touches (social networks, your tube, search etc etc).

Honestly I agree. This is part of what I love about the idea of Kagi. I do believe a not-for-profit alternative is needed, however if there's any for-profit model a search engine should have, it should be paid for by the user rather than the advertiser imo.

Re: Show HN: My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs

#17

Post by NitpickLawyer »

UnmappedStack wrote: post #14
DeepSeaTortoise wrote: post #10

I'm in no way an expert, but IMO there is a major misconception in the free-ish software community that profit should be at most secondary to offering a fair and as good as sustainably possible product. I strongly disagree with this. IMO developers of free-ish as in freedom products OWE it, not only to themselves, but their community to be as profitable as possible within the rules they think that should be followed…

This is a really interesting view, but I'm not sure I agree. So many amazing projects are truly free without the goal of profit yet their maintainers still do amazing work. I feel like part of the reason this works is because often the load is split between several maintainers (of which I hope to onboard soon, and have one or two offers already from people to contribute) and also the fact it's genuinely something enj…

There's a difference between awesome projects that don't have a recurring cost (i.e. open source software that users run themselves) and a search engine. You cannot physically run a search engine without real-world costs today. Those funds need to come from somewhere. And offering a good product at scale costs a lot of money.

Re: Show HN: My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs

#18

Post by UnmappedStack »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #17
UnmappedStack wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really interesting view, but I'm not sure I agree. So many amazing projects are truly free without the goal of profit yet their maintainers still do amazing work. I feel like part of the reason this works is because often the load is split between several maintainers (of which I hope to onboard soon, and have one or two offers already from people to contribute) and also the fact it's genuinely something enj…

There's a difference between awesome projects that don't have a recurring cost (i.e. open source software that users run themselves) and a search engine. You cannot physically run a search engine without real-world costs today. Those funds need to come from somewhere. And offering a good product at scale costs a lot of money.

That is very true, and it's not cheap to maintain. I do however really hope that donations can cover it enough, and I have plans about other ways to monetise it while remaining not-for-profit without ads or anything that affects the user.

Re: Show HN: My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs

#19

Post by barrell »

DeepSeaTortoise wrote: post #10

I'm in no way an expert, but IMO there is a major misconception in the free-ish software community that profit should be at most secondary to offering a fair and as good as sustainably possible product. I strongly disagree with this. IMO developers of free-ish as in freedom products OWE it, not only to themselves, but their community to be as profitable as possible within the rules they think that should be followed…

There’s part of this that I agree to - I tend to disagree with most anti-capitalist (or anti-profit) sentiment. However, I disagree that builders “owe” anyone anything, and I strongly disagree with goal of as much profit “as possible”.

I miss the days when someone would make a service where the user would benefit as much as possible and the creator got compensated fairly. I feel like that system worked for hundreds of years. It’s only in the last couple decades that we’ve made this obligation for maximal profits - something that I personally hold responsible for all the mass enshittification going on these days.

Re: Show HN: My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs

#20

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

UnmappedStack wrote: post #5
Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #2

Awesome project, I have a quick suggestion but can you please make adding custom ddg bangs into your project itself rather quickly? There was this project on hackernews which was recently shown where they (scraped?) the internet and then created an really efficient embedding of the search engine. I wish if you could look more into it or contact the creator of that project perhaps. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id…

Thank you! I would definitely consider custom ddg bangs, yes. Is there any particular reason you want that rather than just all ddg's bangs like it is currently? I'll have a look into that project, thank you. Cost is a slight issue so far, yes. There have been about 4,000 searches in the past couple days but I've slightly improved cost efficiency with caching, and I've received two small donations which do help a bit…

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