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

Why Lichess will always be free

lichess.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 477 posts

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#191

Post by cassepipe »

hinkley wrote: post #109
cassepipe wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's literally what's written in the article.

As you say, that line is at about the midpoint of the article. Your phrasing leaves it a little up in the air as to whether that is what the article is about, which I don’t think it is. “That is literally what’s written in the article” is quite a different statement from, “That’s literally mentioned in the article.” Yes, that’s mentioned in the article. Fine.

English is not my native language, I don't quite master all the subtleties.

From what I understood you hijacked the thread into something like "don't be gullible, nothing runs forever, they're lying" which misrepresented the point of the Lichess article which is that they won't charge ever.

Imagine sb reacting to an announcement that healthcare will be free with "Nobody lives for ever, don't be stupid, they're lying"

Hijacking threads towards your personal point of interest is fine I guess and is part of why HN is interesting to me but then it should be clear you are talking about your own thing and you should not artificially place it in the context of the post under discussion (especially if it turns out you have not read it through).

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#192

Post by Scarblac »

giords wrote: post #166
9387367 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are missing the point. Lichess is creating a very strong competitive advantage by positioning their platform as ad free. Want to put this to a test? Imagine if you were to create a competitor and you also wanted to run ads, now imagine you will be competing with an extremely successful project that people love that doesn’t run ads so you will never be able to offer a better experience to their users. Lichess is u…

You're pretty much describing chess.com

And chess.com has more money to spend, so they can have things like paid grandmasters streaming, video courses, offical tournaments with large prizes. It's not all ad based, they also have a subscription model that opens more features.

It's good that both exist. I spend 99% of my online chess playing time on Lichess but there are also lots of people for who it is the other way around.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#193

Post by jek0 »

Stratoscope wrote: post #101
zimbatm wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads are an attack on our attention. When I go to a website, I decide to direct my attention to this website, because I believe it will offer something of interest to me. Obviously things don't come for free, somebody has to pay for it, but the issue is that as a user, I didn't agree to getting my attention diverted. The trade isn't done upfront and by the time I see the ad, it's already too late. There is also a coll…

> Ads are an attack on our attention. That may well be true, but let me tell you a story. I recently got into binge watching some old TV shows I enjoyed as a kid, like What's My Line and a few others. But most of the YouTube copies have the commercials stripped out! The few videos that have the old commercials are a blast. The Remington Rand Univac Electronic Brain. The Remington Rand Shaver! And as we all know, 9 ou…

A friend of mine, from Romania, has fond memories of his youth under the communist rule of Nicolae Ceaușescu, being always reminded how great the leader was and how he admired him as a kid.

He discovered later he was only manipulated into that, but still classified this as good memories.

It's a little bit like those old adverts, it doesn't mean it is a good thing to perpetuate.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#195

Post by V-2 »

sireat wrote: post #116

I love Lichess (13k+ games and counting). It is a worthy alternative to chess.com model . There should be room for both.(chessbase.com, ICC, FICS are lesser alternatives now) That said this low pressure model only works when you are a lean shop(single developer proficient in Scala) AND have millions of users. Running a lean shop might be an admirable goal but millions of users is not for every project. There are thou…

"(chessbase.com, ICC, FICS are lesser alternatives now)"

I'd say that the main competitor of the two is now Chess24.

It follows the subscription/premium model, taking it even further than Chess.com. Eg. the latter doesn't require you to be a paid user just to export a pgn of your own game - but Chess24 does.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#196

Post by Scarblac »

maccard wrote: post #112
DorianSinDeep wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While its good that you're willing to compromise in a reasonable manner, I don't think it has particular relevance to the point that advertisements in any form are most likely to be about something you won't go looking for yourself. There are even some companies with no advertisement spending because their product is so essentially useful that people will seek it out themselves.

> There are even some companies with no advertisement spending because their product is so essentially useful that people will seek it out themselves Really? I'd love to hear more about this.

Did you see an ad for Hacker News?

I'm writing in a paper notepad right now, found a web shop selling it by a normal Google result after describing what I was looking for, not an ad.

The pens I always buy I first bought in a stationary store, ended up liking them and now I always buy that brand.

Farmers sell their produce to supermarkets probably without having to advertize for them, and I go to the particularly supermarket I go to because it's closest to where I live.

Lots of things we use on a daily basis we never saw ads for, and yet they're sold to us by companies. Somehow.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#197

Post by cletus »

tayo42 wrote: post #147
zimbatm wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads are an attack on our attention. When I go to a website, I decide to direct my attention to this website, because I believe it will offer something of interest to me. Obviously things don't come for free, somebody has to pay for it, but the issue is that as a user, I didn't agree to getting my attention diverted. The trade isn't done upfront and by the time I see the ad, it's already too late. There is also a coll…

Those few good years after pop up ads were eliminated by pop up blockers and ad blockers was so nice. Then the war on ad block began and internet is worse then it used to be. Auto play videos in a modal that can't be closed that start with a video on. Wtf

It's pretty much mandatory to have (yet another) addon to disable autoplaying videos, sadly.

I think I hate this more than ads, honestly (not all autoplaying videos are ads).

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#198

Post by V-2 »

wright08 wrote: post #159
DoryMinh wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you prefer lichess to chess.com?

Chess.com is super bloated, slow to load, and hard to navigate. There's so much noise on the screen compared to playing on lichess. Features are paywalled. For example if I want to know how the top players are responding to a certain sequence of moves, I can just see that on lichess. Also weird stuff is locked like using your own computer to analyze games. Also if you haven't been to the site for awhile you get a lov…

Yes - not only features are limited and paywalled (fine, you need to keep the lights on), but they're nagging you about buying a subscription at every turn (now this feels intrusive to me).

Their UI also feels clunky and dated: kind of like a 90s, or early 2000s desktop app.

They do offer much more features, but most of them aren't even remotely essential to me: like a bazillion of bizarre chess variants (lichess has a few simple alternatives, but no stuff like 4-player chess etc.), or "personalized" bots to play against ("play against Beth Harmon"; it feels very Disneylandish to me), and so on.

This being said, I don't mean to bash chess.com, it has certain advantages, and I do play on both websites. Still, lichess is my go-to, no-nonsense, default option.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#199

Post by ratww »

kissgyorgy wrote: post #31

Sure this is a very nice cause, but if you don't have proper revenue, you can't pay UX designers to make something more people could use. Explains why Lichess is straight up ugly and the interface is just messy.

You couldn't be more wrong.

Newspaper websites are full of advertisement and probably the worst sites in terms of UX in the internet. Even if you hide the ads, there's still the constant clickbait and autoplaying videos. Same for paid-by-ad blogs that just use default themes (with notable exceptions like Daring Fireball). Same for any file hosts that doesn't have a freemium model (compare, for example, Mediafire vs Dropbox).

On the other hand, services that offer recurring signatures mostly often have better UX.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#200

Post by jononor »

agustif wrote: post #115
matsemann wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about entitlement. But this guy is really good at multiple things. SRE, frontend, backend, project management etc. He could probably earn twice as much working a normal job, and even more for the right company. He don't want to. And maybe don't want/need to earn more. And that is completely fine. But his impact is huuuge. I'd wish more people did like him. But I don't think many will, because those sk…

If he keeps 100% of ownership, that 58k can become 500k in a few years?

What do you mean by ownership? Lichess is a non-profit association, not a limited company owned by the developer.
Post reply on HN