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Why Lichess will always be free

lichess.org

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Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#341

Post by nly »

oli5679 wrote: post #177
laydn wrote: post #7

Cost breakdown here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Si3PMUJGR9KrpE5lngSk... I hope OVH would donate some compute/machines to lichess. It would help lichess a lot financially. It would be good publicity for OVH and I think it would be a drop in the ocean on their balance sheet.

It's interesting that he spends so little on servers. 1 billion chess games per year, often with >20k concurrent users and and some very heavy-duty engine analysis occurring for some proportion of these games and they only spends $56k. I have seen startups with only hundreds of customers spend 10x this on AWS by copying the fancy tools used by tech giants. It is also interesting how little the creator pays himself ($…

I had the opposite reaction.

$1000/mo on a few frontend servers for only 20K concurrent users seems excessive.

I've seen simple $40/mo droplets handle 50,000 concurrent websocket connections with minimal latency without breaking a sweat.

$2000/mo on databases is also nuts, unless you're storing hundreds of terabytes at high redundancy levels.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#342

Post by roofwellhams »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #331
0xffff2 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Disclaimer: this is personal opinion and relates in no way to my employment. I see this quite a bit on HN and I always thing it's silly, but this time it's particularly perplexing. Are you a lawyer for Mattel or something?

I somehow knew someone would ask and mentally prepared a response! My employer thinks I shouldn't comment on social media at all because people might think I'm commenting in an official capacity. Their line is "don't use social media", so if there's a comment where an argument could be leveled against me that "people think this is a part of your employment" I indemnify myself against that argument. It's not unlike ac…

Why you don't create a new account that's not related to you or your company?

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#343

Post by cdelsolar »

tux1968 wrote: post #320
cdelsolar wrote: post #303

I made a site heavily inspired by lichess (specifically AGPL, no ads ever, free forever), but for crossword board games (think Scrabble, Words with Friends, etc). You can see it here at https://woogles.io It has been growing steadily and we're about to hit 400K games played; it's the site of choice for the streaming community and we just finished hosting the World Blitz Championship this past week :) Thibault is sort…

My sister plays a lot of scrabble so I am happy to be able to share your site with her. If I can be so bold as to offer one criticism of your site though, it was a bit confusing when I first clicked to look at it. The first page is a barrage of information none of which seemed relevant for my first visit. I clicked the links at the top of the page and ended up on completely different web sites with equally confusing…

Appreciate the thoughts - thank you! We will pass your comments on to our designers :)

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#344

Post by philshem »

S4M wrote: post #258
philshem wrote: post #167

The world needs Libackgammon!

You can make it! There is already lishogi.org for shogi (Japanese chess) and lidraughts.org for draughts. They took the code for lichess and tweaked it for their respective games.

I probably can’t, but I could put up some seed money and set up a non-profit.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#345

Post by robocat »

acatton wrote: post #182
iSnow wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gross avg. wage in France is $42700[1] if calculated with 12 months and no variable benefits. Mean would be more interesting, but I don't seem to easily find it. It might sound weirdly low for someone in IT in the USA, but first, not everyone commands FAANG sales, and second, wages in the EU are comparatively low. With some seniority, you can rise to $100k relatively easily, but you have to sell your soul to either s…

> It might sound weirdly low for someone in IT in the USA, but first, not everyone commands FAANG sales, and second, wages in the EU are comparatively low. With some seniority, you can rise to $100k relatively easily, but you have to sell your soul to either some consulting company or old Fortune-500 industries. Exactly. The non profit is registered in a small town of Maine-et-Loire.[1] Assuming this is close to wher…

The $56k/€42k is before tax [π].

Personally I would struggle to pay for a house, support dependants, and save for retirement on that amount. Partially because I went back to $zero in my thirties (although I know plenty of people in the same category much older... Trying to catch up is hard mode).

[π] https://old.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/mpasyl/i_started_lic...

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#347

Post by kixiQu »

0xffff2 wrote: post #325
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably the owners of the trade marks you just referred to (Scrabble, etc.) are onboard [no pun intended!] with you? Otherwise I see tortuous infringement court cases in your future!? I thought Mattel only allowed their own online games to be called "Scrabble" RTM. Disclaimer: this is personal opinion and relates in no way to my employment.

>Disclaimer: this is personal opinion and relates in no way to my employment. I see this quite a bit on HN and I always thing it's silly, but this time it's particularly perplexing. Are you a lawyer for Mattel or something?

It's not silly only in proportion to your employer's aggression on the topic.

Perhaps there needs to be an account disclaimer checkbox as a standard feature: "I speak in no official capacity related to any employer or professional role"....

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#348

Post by CyberRabbi »

eloisant wrote: post #236

Thibault Duplessis is actually an ex co-worker of mine, and this guy is truly impressive. Not only he is a very talented developer, he really sticks to his beliefs and made what Lichess is today. He used to take up a job for a year or so, save money, and travel the world for a year or so until money runs out. Then he would come back to France and take up a new job. All working on Lichess during his free time. For a f…

Do you know how many children he has? That would be the easiest way of getting more people like him.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#349

Post by a_lieb »

Here's a business model for successful open-source projects—one that's already in use, but I think is rarely seen as a business model per se. I'd be interested to see if there's a blog post or the like about this already.

If you're the head of a successful OSS project and you believe it's helping your career in the way of industry notoriety, good demo work to show potential employers, etc.—then give a cut to cover the project's expenses, or even hire folks for freelance work.

There might be stretches when you're not going to make any extra money from the project; say you've reached the point where the project isn't a top line-item in your resume and is probably not responsible for your next salary bump. You can still honor what you've gotten from the project by voluntarily investing back a portion of the money. It has a "benefit corporation" flavor.

If this sounds like too much generosity to expect of people, consider people like Thibault. He's very, very deep into the "generous" side, in that pretty clearly he could work on the project _far_ less and still get a dream job. What I'm describing is a way to make an overall profit and still feel like you're giving back to the world by nurturing the project you've built.

Obviously, this is an overwhelmingly common thing in practice already, whether it's someone who made an OSS project to get a good job and then continued to work in their spare time to maintain it, or language BDFLs who maintain the project on a volunteer basis, but as a result of founding the language they have amazing and well-paying day jobs. But so far I've never seen it described as an actual business model, where you can feel great about helping to keep up your project, but still come out ahead overall.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#350

Post by sildur »

paulcole wrote: post #281
LocalPCGuy wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP, but I have the right to control what code is delivered to (downloaded) and run on my computer. That doesn't mean I have the right to use a website that decides they aren't good with me doing so without the ads or other portions I may block. I don't believe I have any moral obligation to make that choice myself. Simply put, I have the right to block ads, and the website has the right to block usage to me i…

> Simply put, I have the right to block ads Let’s assume I agree that you have been tricked into following a link that is infested with terrible ads and that I agree you have the right to block those ads. Isn’t it then your obligation to never visit that site again? You understand that ads are how the website has chosen to make money. You don’t like how they have chosen to make money so you simply never visit the web…

> Isn’t it then your obligation to never visit that site again?

Not really. As long as your site is public, I can enter. If you don't want that, make it private, or subscription only.

> It’s like if you found out a restaurant didn’t accept cash and still kept going to eat there when you only had a credit card, knowing in advance you can’t and won’t pay.

It's more like going to a public museum that accepts donations and not making a donation. The place is public, and I decide if I pay or not.

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