The toxic side of free – how I lost the love for my side project (part 4) • Hacker News Board

Re: The toxic side of free – how I lost the love for my side project (part 4)

#131

Post by cwilkes » Fri, Sep 18, 2015, 3:03 AM UTC

munificent wrote: post #21

degenerate wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then you'll have people creating new accounts every time the trial ends, instead of paying! The sweet spot is probably 24 hours. Too long for a fraudster to wait around, and too short for people to bother making an account every day for pro fuctionality.

> But then you'll have people creating new accounts every time the trial ends, instead of paying! These would be malicious users . Both words are significant here. People using the service just to check credit cards are malicious, but not users. Free users are users but not malicious. I think for most services, the set of actual malicious users—people who do want to use the service for its intended purpose, but don't…

Every single dev group I've worked with has been too cheap (as individuals) to pony up for things $50-100 for jet brains software (pycharm and rubymine) and instead waste hours thinking up ways to change a license file or register with a different email.

I would never sell a product to devs. They don't know how to value their time. Which is odd considering we're in the business of automating other processes.

Re: The toxic side of free – how I lost the love for my side project (part 4)

#132

Post by kentt » Fri, Sep 18, 2015, 3:07 AM UTC

ufo wrote: post #118

chejazi wrote: post #70

JS Bin is a service that appeals to techies. As such, it should see moderate success accepting Bitcoin! Bitcoin transactions are non-reversible, which would solve the fraud complications.

How many people do you think would pay for jsbin via Bitcoin but not via regular money?

A couple percent at most. I think companies who've implemented Bitcoin payment have seen a 1% or less. A good number of those would have been customers anyway.

I love Bitcoin and use it a lot, but the truth is, this likely wouldn't do much for jsbin.

Re: The toxic side of free – how I lost the love for my side project (part 4)

#133

Post by cpncrunch » Fri, Sep 18, 2015, 3:18 AM UTC

hughw wrote: post #76

saidajigumi wrote: post #68

> I can't win the complaint. The card was stolen, the £6 belongs to the original card owner, no question. This is so wrong. Business owners, on average, have little to no information or power to deal with this. The only agencies that have ultimate ability to deal with fraud are the card issuers and banks. IIRC, it was Bruce Schneier who first clearly articulated this for me. By placing all fraud risk on the issuers,…

Does Paypal ameliorate the problem? Is there less fraud if you accept Paypal only?

Yes, paypal seems to have very good fraud detection. I've been using them for the last 9 years for mostly $10 transactions (about $30k a year or so) and I don't think I've had a single fraudulent transaction in that time. Before paypal I used worldpay, and although their support is infinitely superior (paypal's support sucks balls), I did have a few fraudulent transactions a year.

Also, paypal's refund fee is just $0.30. (Not sure if it costs any more for a chargeback).

Re: The toxic side of free – how I lost the love for my side project (part 4)

#134

Post by jondubois » Fri, Sep 18, 2015, 3:28 AM UTC

Free products need to have a way to lock users in. It's not evil or unethical - In fact, it's the opposite; if you don't lock your users into your free product, your competitor will lock them into an expensive alternative which will give them less flexibility.

Re: The toxic side of free – how I lost the love for my side project (part 4)

#135

Post by hiou » Fri, Sep 18, 2015, 4:04 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #73

teddyh wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Studies Find Reward Often No Motivator http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/motivation.html

That was a good read, but there was a different mechanism at work for me. When I do something for free, and someone complains about it or finds it wanting, it does not bother me. Sort of like "Double your money back on Free Advice you don't like." But when I am being paid to provide the thing I am providing, a big sense of my wanting to make sure they are getting their value kicks in, and since I undervalue my time t…

I find this so interesting as I have always felt if someone is paying me I make sure to give them exactly what they paid for and not a bit more. A market economy does not allow me generosity. When I'm writing code for myself or others the upside feels boundless as appreciation and enjoyment are much more difficult to quantify.

Re: The toxic side of free – how I lost the love for my side project (part 4)

#136

Post by gkop » Fri, Sep 18, 2015, 4:08 AM UTC

srtjstjsj wrote: post #30

dspillett wrote: post #16

This is why if any of my personal projects go anywhere they'll remain free while they are in my hands. They can act as a portfolio ("look what I've done, aren't I clever") for when job hunting but I'll not even try make money directly from them even to cover costs. If they become worth charging for then someone can buy the rights from me and run it. Yeah they'll take the lion's share, but also all that hassle and I c…

This is why Amazon DevPay(?) exists. You ship software, and Amazon directly bills your customers for the AWS usage. you don't have to get into the AWS-reselling business just because you wrote cloud software.

Except

    Sellers of Amazon DevPay applications must be able to do business in the 
    United States. Funds earned through the sale of Amazon DevPay applications
    can only be withdrawn to U.S. bank accounts.

https://aws.amazon.com/devpay/faqs/#general_10

    Q: How are taxes handled?

    Amazon DevPay does not provide tax collection services for you. You are
    responsible for paying the appropriate taxes (local, state, federal,
    etc.) as applicable.

https://aws.amazon.com/devpay/faqs/#pricing_7

Re: The toxic side of free – how I lost the love for my side project (part 4)

#137

Post by vfdfv » Fri, Sep 18, 2015, 4:11 AM UTC

umziehennachbar wrote: post #124

crazypyro wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good way to counter testers is to add a delay to charging the card.

what does that mean? Please describe

Give your users something like "first two weeks free", which will annoy the fraudsters who want the charge to go through immediately.

Re: The toxic side of free – how I lost the love for my side project (part 4)

#138

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 18, 2015, 4:23 AM UTC

ricardobeat wrote: post #75

pjlegato wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately for merchants, no, the legal responsibility for fraudulent transactions rests entirely with the merchant. Not only that, but processors routinely penalize merchants who fail to screen fraudulent transactions sufficiently with fines and eventually banishment from the processor. A few processors might provide something like this as a paid value-added service, but it's unusual. The next-gen all-in-one card…

By "all-in-one card processors" do you mean payment gateways? The majority of them do offer built-in fraud protection, though the efficacy varies a lot. In fact, Stripe also offers it: https://stripe.com/docs/fraud But if you think about the case he describes in the article, there is very little distinguishing a fraudulent purchase to test the validity of a credit card vs a legitimate one, unless they are completely…

[deleted]

Re: The toxic side of free – how I lost the love for my side project (part 4)

#139

Post by wobbleblob » Fri, Sep 18, 2015, 4:50 AM UTC

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #79

bluecalm wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VATMOSS is a nightmare for small businesses. I am lucky that authorities in my country decide that I can avoid it with my project (because it doesn't fit exact definition of electronic service so I can pay VAT in my country as it's a place the service is provided in according one interpretation of the new law) but they have plans to extend it and I may be forced to go through accounting hell to comply with this regul…

>It's a hostile piece of regulation which very severely disincentivize you from starting a business Would this fall under regulatory capture? I'm not sure to what extent existing international businesses worked to get this established.

The intention with EU regulations like these is usually to prevent a 'race to the bottom' as they call it. They're turning the EU into a common market without internal trade barriers, but when you do that, what happens when one country has a VAT of 15% and another of 25%? Businesses that can move, will move (administratively) to the 15% country, forcing all countries to lower their VAT to the lowest level. You can argue that this measure isn't working, or that the cost outweighs the benefits, but I don't think it is regulatory capture. Brussels is really trying to minimize the impact of the common market on member states' domestic policies.

Re: The toxic side of free – how I lost the love for my side project (part 4)

#140

Post by fsloth » Fri, Sep 18, 2015, 4:54 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #103

ChuckMcM wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was a good read, but there was a different mechanism at work for me. When I do something for free, and someone complains about it or finds it wanting, it does not bother me. Sort of like "Double your money back on Free Advice you don't like." But when I am being paid to provide the thing I am providing, a big sense of my wanting to make sure they are getting their value kicks in, and since I undervalue my time t…

I guess I've just become a bit more jaded. Or maybe I always have been. I used to maintain a good amount of open source stuff, and the entitled complaints really got to me. But if I'm being paid for something, I feel the obligation to deliver what I've promised, and I feel bad if I fall short. I do struggle sometimes with valuing my time "correctly", but overall I think I've experienced less stress building software…

"the entitled complaints really got to me."

Having done some voluntary work long time ago - I would say providing value to a community in any context seldom pays in direct gratitude.

In direct communication, complaints are always more likely than compliments. The value must come from somewhere else than direct feedback from beneficiaries, like observing the thing you just pulled off being enjoyed by a lot of people and being pleased of it. The corollary to this is that it's much more enjoyable to work for free in a friendly group than alone because then the company and support of peers can be an equivalent source of joy.

I suppose a lone free software project lacks these both, unless one can visualize the value by looking at the number of downloads...