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Why Lichess will always be free

lichess.org

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Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#381

Post by Stratoscope »

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…

After reading the replies, I should clarify something. When I see some of those old commercials today, I too think they are appalling. Fred and Barney smoking Winstons? On a kid's show? 9 out of 10 doctors recommending Camels? Ugh. But they sure are interesting to see again.

Some of the other ads were great. A live report from the computer room where the Remington Rand Univac Electronic Brain was predicting the weather? Awesome! And a big step on the way to today where I can use Weather Underground forecasts and talk to you over radio and light waves on our personal supercomputers.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#382

Post by porphyra »

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…

Yes!!! Finally --- it is about time that someone made a modern alternative to isc.ro which is full of security problems (e.g. passwords stored in plaintext; your rack is randomly generated on the clientside) and looks ugly.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#383

Post by chengiz »

ycombinete wrote: post #248
lavp wrote: post #190

Lichess is truly on a class of its own. It delivers a better service than any of it’s alternatives (in my opinion), and it’s actually 100% free with no BS. Funny enough, I’ve donated around $30 in total which is $30 more than I would’ve ever thought of spending on a chess site. Hats off to thibault and the open source community for creating such a wonderful gem.

I donate a tiny $5 a month. Not bad for a service I use everyday. Another way to help is to host an analysis server[0]. I give them one core of my old i3-5100. It’s easy to setup, and I like knowing that it’s chugging away 24/7. [0] https://github.com/niklasf/fishnet

In case you're using paypal, it seems paypal takes 9% of that $5, see their costs spreadsheet posted elsewhere here. If you can, try donating bigger amounts less frequently. The fee goes down to 3% at ~$60.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#384

Post by Zebfross »

It is noble, but I disagree about ads. Maybe there are products that chess players would be genuinely interested in that a company would be willing to pay to have advertised. It can be completely customized to be tasteful and unobtrusive, and users may even be thankful for it. On Wikipedia I’d way rather have tasteful ads than the half screen request for donations.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#385

Post by ece »

brainwad wrote: post #295
kthejoker2 wrote: post #180

In a simple 2x2x2 matrix of * product aimed at specific audience / general audience * product is "one big idea" / a lot of little ideas * product requires long term engagement / short term engagement Only "specific audience" / "one big idea" / "long term engagement" can expect to - indeed, must - thrive on patronage. The 7 other boxes are beholden to their users' fickleness.

Wikipedia would seem to be general audience / big idea / short-term but survives on patronage.

And it's not immune to editor and user fickleness.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#386

Post by neop1x »

Zebfross wrote: post #384

It is noble, but I disagree about ads. Maybe there are products that chess players would be genuinely interested in that a company would be willing to pay to have advertised. It can be completely customized to be tasteful and unobtrusive, and users may even be thankful for it. On Wikipedia I’d way rather have tasteful ads than the half screen request for donations.

I agree with OP and disagree with you. People are different. I hate ads and I rarely buy products via ads. More often I use friend recommendation or product reviews/comparisons. I don't want to see ads when I am not planning to buy something.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#387

Post by CyberRabbi »

SamPatt wrote: post #370
CyberRabbi wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I understand your point, but children are not guaranteed to be like their parents, and many gifted people are actually poor parents.

In general children are more likely to be like their parents than non-children. That’s the rule, of course there are exceptions.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#388

Post by yourad_io »

nezirus wrote: post #234
hutrdvnj wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"to a certain German hosting provider" Hetzner

Yeah, don't want to provide free advertising (they don't need it), but they should be as reliable as OVH for hosting servers in Europe.

Until you get DDOSed and then they (Hetzner) null-route your server.

They claim not to:

https://twitter.com/hetzner_online/status/968085046073622528...

I do wonder if that is still the case.

edit: Maybe not: https://community.centminmod.com/threads/any-personal-feedba...

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#389

Post by Noos »

almavi wrote: post #137

So many comments failing to grasp the idea of someone wanting his job/passion to be publicly available at the cost of him not getting rich. So sad.

the problem though is what happens if he gets sick or needs to move on, or the passion fades? Now you need to hire someone who may not be motivated in the same way, and if compensation is low for the duties entailed, you won't get what you need.

It's not good to undervalue work because you really rely on the gift of the worker to keep the project going.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#390

Post by pbhjpbhj »

0xffff2 wrote: post #375
kixiQu wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"....

It's silly because most employers have no ability to match "0xffff2" or "pbhjpbhj" or "kixiQu". To a person in the real world. I've never identified myself as an employee of my company on this account and I'm certainly not identifying myself as an employee of my company in this post, so since I don't work for the NSA, I post whatever I want, no disclaimer necessary. If for some reason I did want to identify my employ…

I'm pretty confident I could be doxxed (email me if you like!), I don't really want to play the game of proper anonymity (throwaway on Tor-Browser over an sshuttle "tunnel" is about as far as I'd go but that would be getting pretty silly; hopefully it'll never happen, if it does I hope my disclaimer will be enough to argue unfair dismissal; who knows.
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