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Write some software, give it away for free

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Re: Write some software, give it away for free

#61

Post by HanClinto »

financetechbro wrote: post #49
HanClinto wrote: post #45

I resonate with this blog post a lot. I think there is something to be said for monetizing ones' hobbies, but I've recently been taking some forays into this world of "build something amazing and give it away for free" as well. I recently took a very big experimental plunge in this path, and I'm curious how well it will work out for me. Open-source state-of-the-art Magic: The Gathering card identification pipeline: h…

This is awesome. I’ve been interested in something like this for some time as I’ve been working on slowly indexing my mtg collection and selling cards I don’t want/need. Will be checking it out this weekend!

Thank you! If you want to test out my tool, here's a link to the web version that is built for scanning in lists of cards:

https://hanclinto.github.io/CollectorVision/

It's still super rough (doesn't support foil-toggling yet, still some issues with double-sided cards, crashing on some iPhones), but overall the rough structure is there -- it can create lists and export as CSV.

If you have feedback or feature requests for your needs, please leave them on Github and I'll get to them as soon as I can. I'd love to hear more user feedback!

Re: Write some software, give it away for free

#63

Post by DANmode »

latexr wrote: post #55
SerCe wrote: post #37

Or don't. I've done both, published OSS projects and sold some software. The level of entitlement in some comments I received on the OSS side was pretty crazy at times. While with the paid software, all of the interactions I had were so much more constructive. YMMV, but willingness to pay is a great filter.

I’ve also done both, and I found both kinds of users in both situations. There have been cases on the commercial front where I just felt like giving customers their money back, even after years of having used the software, and told them to not come back. There’s a lot of entitlement and craziness from paying users too, and those are harder to ignore. With open-source it’s much simpler to drive a hard line. My “favour…

> it’s much simpler to drive a hard line.

But driving that line is a cost: to you, your volunteers, or your tokens(?).

Re: Write some software, give it away for free

#64

Post by fragmede »

nohell wrote: post #6
Topology1 wrote: post #5

Wish there was a way to send this to every mobile dev who thinks they can (and should) charge a subscription for their hobby app that provides a basic function

What! You don't want to pay $3.99 a WEEK for a calculator???

What if I only want to use +? Do I get a discount? How about you only charge me when I use = at the end, but not before?

Re: Write some software, give it away for free

#65

Post by xboxnolifes »

criticalfault wrote: post #34
cortesoft wrote: post #21

I don't think this debate has an easy answer. Yes, not everything should be about money, but yes, we all need to make money to survive. I think we all agree the answer isn't, "No one should make any money writing software." I also think we can agree that the answer isn't, "you should charge money for every bit of software you write." So how do we decide which is which? I don't want to stop being a professional softwa…

wouldn't this apply everywhere? let's say agriculture. if you make one tone of tomatoes, one family cannot consume this in a year without becoming red. so should farmers also give it for free? what about artists? it's not that their work even has a utility function...

If you know any farmers, chances are they have given some away for free. To friends and family at least. Artists I know have done some art for free.

Re: Write some software, give it away for free

#66

Post by parentheses »

With AI it feels writing software that is open is less attractive. It's hard to trust OSS made recently b/c you can tell if someone knows what they're doing and even spent any time on quality. Also, often times people don't reach for software others make (unless it's boring and old stuff, in which case this advice doesn't apply.)

Re: Write some software, give it away for free

#67

Post by latexr »

DANmode wrote: post #63
latexr wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve also done both, and I found both kinds of users in both situations. There have been cases on the commercial front where I just felt like giving customers their money back, even after years of having used the software, and told them to not come back. There’s a lot of entitlement and craziness from paying users too, and those are harder to ignore. With open-source it’s much simpler to drive a hard line. My “favour…

> it’s much simpler to drive a hard line. But driving that line is a cost : to you, your volunteers, or your tokens(?).

There’s no cost to me to stop an entitled disruptive user with zero positive contributions from destabilising the project. No cost to my volunteers either. The opposite is true in both cases; removing that user is a net benefit and I’ve done so in the past specifically to protect the experience of the volunteers.

As for tokens, there have been exactly zero cases where someone has submitted LLM code to one of my repos that has been up to my standards and I have accepted it. Yes, I can say that with certainty. If I wanted LLM code I’d ask for it myself, having an intermediary in that process is worse than useless.

Re: Write some software, give it away for free

#68

Post by tithos »

I always hoped that AI would enable people to take paid software and remake it so they could give it away for free. I started developing websites about 20 years ago back then apart from the big name software and Ide’s. Everything was free. Nowadays everything is a subscription.

Re: Write some software, give it away for free

#69

Post by nohell »

fragmede wrote: post #64
nohell wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What! You don't want to pay $3.99 a WEEK for a calculator???

What if I only want to use +? Do I get a discount? How about you only charge me when I use = at the end, but not before?

Guess they gotta hit you with the under-utilization "convenience fee" for $1.99? /s

Re: Write some software, give it away for free

#70

Post by klinquist »

cpursley wrote: post #23
klinquist wrote: post #22

I just did this for a MacOS+iOS universal app that lets you take quick notes - and keeps them in Markdown files on your Mac's filesystem (so agents can parse them) https://www.github.com/klinquist/notesync

Neat, I just put together my first MacOS app. Am thinking about an iOS version and using the Apple data thing to keep them in sync. Any tips? https://github.com/agoodway/goodday

CloudKit makes it easy - and you can send push notifications (all part of CloudKit, no push tokens or subscriptions to manage) to inform the "other" clients when there is new data to retrieve. Best to think about each task being an individual file in CloudKit.

Generally speaking it just works.

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