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Temptations of an open-source Chrome extension developer (2021)

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Re: Temptations of an open-source Chrome extension developer (2021)

#321

Post by shpx »

alooPotato wrote: post #207
cal85 wrote: post #94

FWIW, and since a few of you probably use it… I own the JSON Formatter extension [0], which I created and open-sourced 12 years ago and have maintained [1] ever since, with 2 million users today. And I solemnly swear that I will never add any code that sends any data anywhere, nor let it fall into the hands of anyone else who would. I’ve been emailed several tempting cash offers from shady people who presumably want…

This seems so weird to me. You're clearly providing value to the world, and according to my moral view, should be entitled to capturing some of that value without resorting to something shady. I'm the founder of Streak where we directly monetize our extension (as do others like Grammarly). Have you tried directly asking your users for $ given the effort you put in?

Making 2 million people individually decide and record how much of their economic output a JSON formatting extension is entitled to is a non-negligible amount of mental effort and time, especially if we had to do it for all extensions and software we use.

Re: Temptations of an open-source Chrome extension developer (2021)

#322

Post by q87b »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #308
q87b wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would money be the only value, that is a really sad view on life. The developer gets joy and gratitude, they can live a happy life. Why bring money into it. Money does not make happy.

> Why would money be the only value, that is a really sad view on life. Good thing nobody said that. > The developer gets joy and gratitude, Your average free software doesn't get very much joy and gratitude back from users either. > they can live a happy life. Why bring money into it. Money does not make happy. If the implication was too subtle, the idea is that when you spend a lot of time making something valuable…

The post I replied to clearly equals value with money.

Re: Temptations of an open-source Chrome extension developer (2021)

#323

Post by hoseja »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #303
hoseja wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point a reality check should be possible. Do you find yourself spending money on advertised-things?

Is it even possible to not spend money on advertised things?

Mostly by not spending money frivolously.

Re: Temptations of an open-source Chrome extension developer (2021)

#324

Post by moneywoes »

collaborative wrote: post #56

I don't know what the solution to this is, but I know a few trusted/legitimate companies that sell their user data for around £20/year even after having monetized their users with actual money I will never do this because violating privacy goes against the core of my beliefs, but there is a conflict I can't seem to work out. On the one hand, I KNOW that the vast majority of users prefer to sell their privacy than pay…

What is this user data

Re: Temptations of an open-source Chrome extension developer (2021)

#325

Post by codedokode »

jrockway wrote: post #79
comboy wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why broadcasted ads which are the same for everybody? Is it trying to track effectiveness of these ads?

Why not? Your cable company would like to charge you extra if you mute the ads or use the bathroom during ad breaks. That's just capitalism.

Exactly. Going to bathroom during ads is just a display of disrespect to creators and marketing people. You could go during the show instead.

Re: Temptations of an open-source Chrome extension developer (2021)

#327

Post by delfinom »

tommica wrote: post #289
mfrisbie wrote: post #14

ChatGPT for Google was #1 on HN earlier this year. Check out the GitHub repo now: that person sold the extension. I had a small side project extension, ~25,000 installs & free to use. I got enough inbound interest trying to "help me monetize" that I thought it would be worth cataloguing all the different unsavory avenues: https://mattfrisbie.substack.com/p/the-ugly-business-of-mone...

Man, being offered $11k for an extension would be hard to say no to... With that a down payment for a house is a much smaller problem. It's always a good idea to consider where the line is for ones own ethics.

In the US, $11k may only cover submitting three months rent + security deposit to rent an apartment.

Re: Temptations of an open-source Chrome extension developer (2021)

#328

Post by [deleted] »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #32

This one is interesting because it seems harmless, if not even helpful (Monitoring DNS errors). What am I missing here? "I’m sure you get business proposals all the time, so I’ll get straight to the point. I hope what I’m proposing is a little different and might actually interest you. I like Hover Zoom+ as a great alternative to it’s bigger brother Hover Zoom that lost its glamour over the last couple of months. We'…

[deleted]

Re: Temptations of an open-source Chrome extension developer (2021)

#329

Post by comboy »

lmm wrote: post #154
comboy wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why broadcasted ads which are the same for everybody? Is it trying to track effectiveness of these ads?

Probably to target an ad for the same product/service at someone who was in the same room as a TV ad. About 10 years ago I worked for an ad targeting company and we got ~50% more click-through on a web ad just by showing it shortly after a TV ad aired in that location (just using the geoip timezone and hoping they might've been watching the right channel), if you could do that only for people who've actually been exp…

Oh, that's clever.

Re: Temptations of an open-source Chrome extension developer (2021)

#330

Post by versteegen »

exikyut wrote: post #283
Pxtl wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No idea of what API they're hitting but basically half of my old humble library won't run anymore - they show a warning about old APIs, show the title screen, then crash to desktop. Even some old games I paid for are gone from the Play Store too. Like, I paid for Puffle Launch and it's just plain gone from my library. Edit: ahah, I was looking in the wrong spot! Its still in my "not installed" list, just not in my "f…

Ah, 2011, the age of so many Angry Birds clones... I just found https://archive.org/details/PuffleLaunchAPK and https://archive.org/details/PuffleLaunchAmazonAPK (both point to each other), with a note that says that the latter generally works and the former crashes. I can verify this; on my (Android 8, 32-bit compatible) device the Play version crashes with: 08-10 14:55:03.864 25995 25995 E linker : ERROR: OOPS: 0 c…

I tried looking up that "no vspace available" error (which is the real error message) and found no explanation. I wonder whether it's something like trying to map a .so segment as memory that's both executable and writeable but it's no longer allowed? And IIRC Android's runtime linker was rewritten sometime around Android ~4 because the original was not very well written, so that might be the cause of the incompatibility. Come to think of it, the large parts of libc that were also completely replaced (mostly with code from OpenBSD and FreeBSD IIRC) because they were terribly buggy will probably cause compatibility issues too.
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