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Why Lichess will always be free

lichess.org

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Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#11

Post by dylan604 »

hinkley wrote: post #4

There are two interpretations of “why”. What is the motivation for it being free. What is the mechanism for it being free. In one of the links, > It amounts to $170 per month. Great news: I have a job (at prismic.io) and I can completely afford that. Lichess is my hobby, and all hobbies cost a bit of money. I can tell you that the joy of building lichess is absolutely worth the price I pay for it! Maybe it’s because…

There's a big difference for good intentions that failed vs lying. I think you know that too. For $170 a month, it could easily switch to a patreon or other type of user contribution model. For $170 a month, it could be get a paper route to pay for it.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#12

Post by PradeetPatel »

Excellent article. Serious kudos to the Lichess team on building and operating such a complex piece of software purely on donations.

I think the most valuable lesson here for me is the understanding between the contributors and their key stakeholders. Because monetary gains and growth are not their KPI, they were able to maintain their software at their own pace.

Thought exercise: Do you foresee this model staying if Lichess were to be acquired by another company?

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#14

Post by DorianSinDeep »

pull_my_finger wrote: post #6

> There is absolutely nothing positive about advertisements on websites from the perspective of their users. They eat up valuable screen space and bandwidth for something that nobody wants to see. They often manipulate and misinform. They have even been the source of security vulnerabilities many times in the past. While I share the loathing of modern Ads as a service or whatever the technical name for giving Google/…

While its good that you're willing to compromise in a reasonable manner, I don't think it has particular relevance to the point that advertisements in any form are most likely to be about something you won't go looking for yourself. There are even some companies with no advertisement spending because their product is so essentially useful that people will seek it out themselves.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#15

Post by cassepipe »

PradeetPatel wrote: post #12

Excellent article. Serious kudos to the Lichess team on building and operating such a complex piece of software purely on donations. I think the most valuable lesson here for me is the understanding between the contributors and their key stakeholders. Because monetary gains and growth are not their KPI, they were able to maintain their software at their own pace. Thought exercise: Do you foresee this model staying if…

"Lichess is a non-profit association in France"

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#16

Post by vkk8 »

hinkley wrote: post #4

There are two interpretations of “why”. What is the motivation for it being free. What is the mechanism for it being free. In one of the links, > It amounts to $170 per month. Great news: I have a job (at prismic.io) and I can completely afford that. Lichess is my hobby, and all hobbies cost a bit of money. I can tell you that the joy of building lichess is absolutely worth the price I pay for it! Maybe it’s because…

Depends a bit on your location also. In some countries, the social security is good enough that people can survive on them while doing whatever (low cost) hobbies they like. I've heard of a few academics continuing to do research while being supported by the unemployment money.

But yeah, some big company offering a crapload of money to buy lichess is also a problem. No-one is idealistic enough to refuse an amount of money that can support them and their family for the next two generations.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#17

Post by rectang »

dylan604 wrote: post #11
hinkley wrote: post #4

There are two interpretations of “why”. What is the motivation for it being free. What is the mechanism for it being free. In one of the links, > It amounts to $170 per month. Great news: I have a job (at prismic.io) and I can completely afford that. Lichess is my hobby, and all hobbies cost a bit of money. I can tell you that the joy of building lichess is absolutely worth the price I pay for it! Maybe it’s because…

There's a big difference for good intentions that failed vs lying. I think you know that too. For $170 a month, it could easily switch to a patreon or other type of user contribution model. For $170 a month, it could be get a paper route to pay for it.

> There's a big difference for good intentions that failed vs lying.

That's true. Good intentions are more compelling, so they draw more people in and convince them more thoroughly, then cause more suffering in the end when everything falls apart.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#18

Post by aaronbrethorst »

DorianSinDeep wrote: post #14
pull_my_finger wrote: post #6

> There is absolutely nothing positive about advertisements on websites from the perspective of their users. They eat up valuable screen space and bandwidth for something that nobody wants to see. They often manipulate and misinform. They have even been the source of security vulnerabilities many times in the past. While I share the loathing of modern Ads as a service or whatever the technical name for giving Google/…

While its good that you're willing to compromise in a reasonable manner, I don't think it has particular relevance to the point that advertisements in any form are most likely to be about something you won't go looking for yourself. There are even some companies with no advertisement spending because their product is so essentially useful that people will seek it out themselves.

This is a nice, albeit reductive hypothesis.

Literally the last thing I did before posting this comment was email a link to a Facebook in-app ad’s advertised product to myself because I wanted to look at it in more detail tomorrow.

I wasn’t looking for the product it was advertising, but I see how it could be extremely useful for me if it works.

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#19

Post by joemi »

hinkley wrote: post #4

There are two interpretations of “why”. What is the motivation for it being free. What is the mechanism for it being free. In one of the links, > It amounts to $170 per month. Great news: I have a job (at prismic.io) and I can completely afford that. Lichess is my hobby, and all hobbies cost a bit of money. I can tell you that the joy of building lichess is absolutely worth the price I pay for it! Maybe it’s because…

> Maybe it’s because I spend some number of hours a week looking at trees, but it never ceases to amaze me how stupid the average technical person is around the word “forever”.

If you truly want to be pedantic, the word "forever" does not appear in the post at all.

Less pedantically, I believe most people have the ability to understand that nothing lasts forever. From reading the post, the emphasis was on "free" and not on the longevity. Also the title of the post could easily be interpreted to mean "Why Lichess will be free for as long as it exists".

Re: Why Lichess will always be free

#20

Post by hinkley »

dylan604 wrote: post #11
hinkley wrote: post #4

There are two interpretations of “why”. What is the motivation for it being free. What is the mechanism for it being free. In one of the links, > It amounts to $170 per month. Great news: I have a job (at prismic.io) and I can completely afford that. Lichess is my hobby, and all hobbies cost a bit of money. I can tell you that the joy of building lichess is absolutely worth the price I pay for it! Maybe it’s because…

There's a big difference for good intentions that failed vs lying. I think you know that too. For $170 a month, it could easily switch to a patreon or other type of user contribution model. For $170 a month, it could be get a paper route to pay for it.

   The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
- Feynman

Lying to yourself doesn’t socially have the same moral hazard as intentionally misleading someone, but the outcomes are often indistinguishable from the perspective of the affected parties.

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