Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nilch.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 80 posts

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

#51

Post by dangus »

UnmappedStack wrote: post #34
dangus wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just turn off the AI feature in Brave search so it’s sort of extra pointless. It’s possibly worth pointing out that the about page doesn’t offer any indicator that this is an actual nonprofit entity from a legal standpoint, so at this point I have to assume it’s just a sole proprietorship that is pinky promising to become a non-profit. In that sense I’m quite happy “donating” to Kagi to provide a stable and s…

That's fair enough. For the record I do intend to apply for a non-profit official entity. I would say it still has a role as opposed to Brave considering the lack of advertising though.

I certainly assume your heart is in the right place. I felt like it was worth warning people to do research before making donations.

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

#52

Post by riedel »

UnmappedStack wrote: post #25
Tiberium wrote: post #22

Right now it seems like the project is just a thin wrapper over Brave Search. Building a complete search engine is way harder than that. You could look into using https://github.com/MarginaliaSearch/MarginaliaSearch if you want to run a real search index - https://marginalia-search.com/ is powered by it.

Yup, it is pretty much just a better frontend for existing search. I want to build my own index and ranking algorithm in the future, but sadly it's quite resource intensive so it will depend on financial viability a bit in terms of timeframe.

openwebsearch.eu wants to build an open index. But despite the funding it is still quite sparse.

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

#53

Post by [deleted] »

UnmappedStack wrote: post #25
Tiberium wrote: post #22

Right now it seems like the project is just a thin wrapper over Brave Search. Building a complete search engine is way harder than that. You could look into using https://github.com/MarginaliaSearch/MarginaliaSearch if you want to run a real search index - https://marginalia-search.com/ is powered by it.

Yup, it is pretty much just a better frontend for existing search. I want to build my own index and ranking algorithm in the future, but sadly it's quite resource intensive so it will depend on financial viability a bit in terms of timeframe.

[deleted]

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

#54

Post by DeepSeaTortoise »

barrell wrote: post #19
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 o…

> I disagree that builders “owe” anyone anything

I disagree, but I think "owe" carries too much of a negative connotation. Through your project you enter both a relationship with yourself, having taken on a commitment to achieve what got you interested in starting your project in the first place, and the community (who also could be nobody but yourself) you want to benefit from your project, who want to rely on your project to some degree.

These relationships lead to obligations, few, if any, of them being legal or moral ones. Instead they are obligations put onto you by your own interests. You do not observe them because e.g. your project's community demands them (who, I'd like to point out again at this specific point, may still be nobody but yourself!), but because they are important to you. What is important to you can and will change, of course.

> I strongly disagree with goal of as much profit “as possible”.

TBH, I consider the "within the rules they think should be followed" part essential to the statement.

> obligation for maximal profits - something that I personally hold responsible for all the mass enshittification going on these days.

I'm not sure, but I don't think that's the case, sad enough, IMO the reason is to be found a bit to the opposite:

As a group, the people we're overall aligned with in our values (on this issue), having found fulfilling success in goals way less influential than money.

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

#55

Post by topaz0 »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #38
axiolite wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> developers of free-ish as in freedom products OWE it, not only to themselves, but their community to be as profitable as possible Wikipedia seems to do just fine without. Commercializing a product is a whole other field, and it's not reasonable to expect everyone to be good at that, and not reasonable to expect developers to all take on a second job of commercializing their hobby projects. Why don't YOU commerciali…

> Wikipedia seems to do just fine without. No, they still pay fair wage, and I would trust it more if it pays fair wage to people spending their time on the project(including the creator).

Wages and profits are conceptually different sorts of things, even if it's sometimes hard to draw a bright line in specific cases.

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

#56

Post by stevage »

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…

Are you confusing revenue and profit? Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap and Lichess are examples of successful non-profit sites. They have costs, they have revenues, but they don't exist to generate profit.

>but also a guarantee to your community that the product will still be around in a few years and not turn into a rug pull

There are no guarantees. Think of all the perfectly good websites that got shut down not because they weren't financially sustainable, but because they didn't generate enough profit for their owners. Google's graveyard is a good place to start.

Or the sites that were profitable, so they then they got bought out, and shut down, because what the owners really wanted was money more than anything.

Clearly the site in question here is not currently sustainable. But attempting to build a sustainable non-profit website is not impossible.

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

#57

Post by YetAnotherNick »

ranguna wrote: post #47
YetAnotherNick wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Examples? If you are going to say something like linux, almost every developer gets paid to contribute to linux(I remember 95% commits have company attribution). Same with postgres etc.

They are paid, but the end used doesn't pay.

End user are corporate linux users and they pay for maintenance? Perhaps you mean all the end users doesn't pay.

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

#58

Post by YetAnotherNick »

topaz0 wrote: post #55
YetAnotherNick wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wikipedia seems to do just fine without. No, they still pay fair wage, and I would trust it more if it pays fair wage to people spending their time on the project(including the creator).

Wages and profits are conceptually different sorts of things, even if it's sometimes hard to draw a bright line in specific cases.

If it was not clear till now I am talking about wage or wage level earning for the creator.

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

#59

Post by DeepSeaTortoise »

axiolite wrote: post #26
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…

> developers of free-ish as in freedom products OWE it, not only to themselves, but their community to be as profitable as possible Wikipedia seems to do just fine without. Commercializing a product is a whole other field, and it's not reasonable to expect everyone to be good at that, and not reasonable to expect developers to all take on a second job of commercializing their hobby projects. Why don't YOU commerciali…

> Wikipedia seems to do just fine without.

Because donations are a system that works very much in their favor and not at all in favor of other types of projects. Look at the OpenSSL Software Foundation having received less than $2k in yearly donations during the leadup to heartbleed.

> Commercializing a product is a whole other field, and it's not reasonable to expect everyone to be good at that, and not reasonable to expect developers to all take on a second job of commercializing their hobby projects.

I very much want to disagree with you, but I do not know how. Achieving some commercial success if you do look for it where others with your skill set are successful is not too difficult (see the trades), but the whole point of such projects is the exact opposite: Doing things differently and pushing accepted boundaries to where you think they should be.

On the other hand I think that this is acceptable. As I wrote in another comment, the obligations in these projects mostly arise from what the developers wants to commit themselves to (or, sadly, do so mistakenly). It is very reasonable to e.g. not value the long term success of your project highly.

You might want to just share an idea, maybe someone else will carry on your project or maybe if in 5 years someone shows a picture of you proudly presenting your project, you're like "AI has gotten really impressive, if I didn't know better, I don't think I could tell that this is a fake". And if you're anything like me, strong commitments to internet strangers might be life-threatening. 2 out of 3 times a promise I made got upvoted, I got hit by a car within less than 48 hours of making it and not once otherwise. An up-arrow got just one pointy end, a GitHub star 5. I'm not taking chances.

Post reply on HN