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

Write some software, give it away for free

nonogra.ph

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 285 posts

Re: Write some software, give it away for free

#81

Post by globalnode »

gt0 wrote: post #54

If I was going to write something for free, it would some weird itch-scratching thing for Plan 9 or something, it wouldn't be something most people would ever want. Realistically though, I'm not going to build software for free any more than I'm going to tidy someone's garden for free. FOSS has delivered some great software, it's also demonetised a lot of areas where software developers could be earning a living. I d…

its definitely a double edged sword. individual developers are generally screwed financially. if you can make something sass you might be able to monetise it but chances are theres a better free version floating around or that the majority of people just dont want to think about computers and will pay m$lop instead. you could sell your idea to investors i guess but thats heavy sales. should software dev even be a paid profession? with enough tools, automation would be within everyones reach, i think thats where we are headed in general.

Re: Write some software, give it away for free

#82

Post by zx8080 »

zx8080 wrote: post #80
gt0 wrote: post #54

If I was going to write something for free, it would some weird itch-scratching thing for Plan 9 or something, it wouldn't be something most people would ever want. Realistically though, I'm not going to build software for free any more than I'm going to tidy someone's garden for free. FOSS has delivered some great software, it's also demonetised a lot of areas where software developers could be earning a living. I d…

Considering the strong opinion on this topic, OP is probably young enough to not remember (or know) the 80s and 90s with too few free options for personal computing and most of the software is proprietary and non-free (exactly as the OP states). While it fueled the traction of shareware, it was a very different epoch, and impossible today with strict controls from MS, Google and Apple on what app is allowed to run. I…

It's possible to say we don't have personal colputers anymore, they are MS/Apple/Google's device now, as they decide what it is allowed to run and what isn't.

Re: Write some software, give it away for free

#83

Post by globalnode »

zx8080 wrote: post #82
zx8080 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering the strong opinion on this topic, OP is probably young enough to not remember (or know) the 80s and 90s with too few free options for personal computing and most of the software is proprietary and non-free (exactly as the OP states). While it fueled the traction of shareware, it was a very different epoch, and impossible today with strict controls from MS, Google and Apple on what app is allowed to run. I…

It's possible to say we don't have personal colputers anymore, they are MS/Apple/Google's device now, as they decide what it is allowed to run and what isn't.

linux

Re: Write some software, give it away for free

#84

Post by johnj-hn »

I'm doing exactly this. I started out only intending to create something for myself. As it got better, I thought that other people might want to use it. I briefly considered trying to sell it, and pretty quickly realized that I didn't want to ruin something I was having fun with by turning it into a business.

Now, instead of worrying about sales, I get to feel good about giving something back to the FOSS community that has given me so much.

I recognize that it is a position of privilege to be able to dedicate so much of my time to a project that gives me nothing financially... and in fact costs me money to produce. No shade at all to people who are not so lucky and need to sell what they make.

Anyway, if you're interested, here's what I'm working on. Feature-wise it's come a long way since the last HN post about it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46619391

And if you're not interested, that's OK, because I'm not trying to sell you anything!

Re: Write some software, give it away for free

#85

Post by nohell »

zx8080 wrote: post #76

Hey author, thank you for blocking text selection on your site! Do you mind describing why?

Text selection should be working. It wasn't blocked. If it's still not working on the non-JS version (click "nojs" in the footer) would you mind making an issue?

Also, you can append .md to the end of any page (except /) to get the markdown from disk as raw text.

Re: Write some software, give it away for free

#86

Post by komali2 »

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 make one tone of tomatoes, one family cannot consume this in a year without becoming red. so should farmers also give it for free?

Now, no, of course not.

Originally though, yes this is how many human economies worked. Surplus was shared in a gift economy.

Re: Write some software, give it away for free

#87

Post by komali2 »

fxtentacle wrote: post #28

I got burned with an attitude like this: unexpectedly, people who had downloaded my open source tool for free started expecting support. Some of them sent pretty unfriendly emails.

I'm sympathetic to FOSS developers but struggle to understand this, maybe because it hasn't happened to me. But, why is this a mental drain? Is there not a simple solution? Reply with the license, "comes with no warranty," "you're free to fork," close issue and move on? I suppose in aggregate it could be draining.

Re: Write some software, give it away for free

#88

Post by komali2 »

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

I was thinking about this recently. I was gonna try an experiment where I make AGPL apps, release the source code ofc, but then published a 1-5$ version on the Google play store. There's the compiled version if you want, pay a couple bucks. If not, you're free to compile and sideload on your own.

Seems fair enough, similar to self hosted software that offers managed hosting for a price, or you can try to run the docker containers on your own or whatever. I do a bit of both, self host the non critical stuff, pay for the critical stuff.

Re: Write some software, give it away for free

#89

Post by nohell »

keyle wrote: post #73

I love the attitude, but this particular service in 2026 is a little risky. A whole range of content can be posted that can make you liable that you want it or not... from product keys, to internal documents, ... I'll just say this, I love the spirit but this is ballsy. It's just going to be used as another user-paste space.

Pretty sure product keys are like a 1 on the scale of 0-to-10.

It's mirrored to other servers running the software, plus there's entire separate instances beyond my control, and Tor-only instances. If one goes down, it will pop up somewhere else.

Post reply on HN