GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

#1

Post by tosh » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 8:17 AM UTC

GitHub stars won’t pay your rent
medium.com

Re: GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

#2

Post by tonyedgecombe » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 9:13 AM UTC

Here’s the catch: when you give away something completely for free, people aren’t that motivated to pay for it.

It's worse than that, people don't value it very highly if it's free.

Re: GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

#3

Post by miguelrochefort » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 9:16 AM UTC

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #2

Here’s the catch: when you give away something completely for free, people aren’t that motivated to pay for it. It's worse than that, people don't value it very highly if it's free.

How can we fix that?

Re: GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

#4

Post by Paraesthetic » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 9:17 AM UTC

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #2

Here’s the catch: when you give away something completely for free, people aren’t that motivated to pay for it. It's worse than that, people don't value it very highly if it's free.

So we need to charge a nominal fee so that they other party thinks it has more value

Re: GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

#5

Post by huffmsa » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 9:20 AM UTC

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #2

Here’s the catch: when you give away something completely for free, people aren’t that motivated to pay for it. It's worse than that, people don't value it very highly if it's free.

I was just thinking the other day, "If Wikipedia became a paid product, would I pay for it?"

Really, what would happen if it became a for profit product? Would I pay for access to the greatest single repository of information the world has ever seen? Or would I shrug my shoulder and let Google tell me that I actually meant to query something else, and trust that the top placed link is really the best?

Re: GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

#6

Post by skohan » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 9:26 AM UTC

I would really like to see OSS funding continue to move in the direction that other content creation has gone in the past decade or so: pay for the creator, not the product - like the Patreon model.

Re: GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

#7

Post by skohan » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 9:29 AM UTC

huffmsa wrote: post #5

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #2

Here’s the catch: when you give away something completely for free, people aren’t that motivated to pay for it. It's worse than that, people don't value it very highly if it's free.

I was just thinking the other day, "If Wikipedia became a paid product, would I pay for it?" Really, what would happen if it became a for profit product? Would I pay for access to the greatest single repository of information the world has ever seen? Or would I shrug my shoulder and let Google tell me that I actually meant to query something else, and trust that the top placed link is really the best?

How would monetizing Wikipedia even work? That raise a lot of questions about fair compensation for the people creating content.

Re: GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

#8

Post by nopacience » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 9:30 AM UTC

Wont pay the rent, but could be a plus to land a good job that pays the rent.

Re: GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

#9

Post by rapsey » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 9:32 AM UTC

miguelrochefort wrote: post #3

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #2

Here’s the catch: when you give away something completely for free, people aren’t that motivated to pay for it. It's worse than that, people don't value it very highly if it's free.

How can we fix that?

You want to fix human nature? Good luck.

Re: GitHub stars won’t pay your rent

#10

Post by tannhaeuser » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 9:33 AM UTC

miguelrochefort wrote: post #3

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #2

Here’s the catch: when you give away something completely for free, people aren’t that motivated to pay for it. It's worse than that, people don't value it very highly if it's free.

How can we fix that?

By giving it away for free only for personal rather than commercial use, as lots of software used to be in the last millenium? But of course what's going to happen is a certain F/OSS advocacy org will shout "this isn't F/OSS as it doesn't obey our no-purpose-limitation criterion" and you and your software will be treated as a pariah and avoided like the plague and even more than pure closed-source software.