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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

#231

Post by gverrilla »

Dependance wrote: post #225
gverrilla wrote: post #131

Free software vs paid software - doesn't even matter right now. What matters is: billionaires and capital have full control, and increasingly more, of everything in our lifes. Throwing tantrums won't help either. What you need to do as a programmer is to get involved in social movements and politics and fight to change the world and to effectively shape the social adoption of new technologies. Truth is most programme…

Like your vibe. One question : what would be, solely according to you, the best policies to get "us" out of this mess ? Tax wealth ? Nuke inheritance ? Something else ?

I don't think it's a mess: it's all going according to plan and maybe 100-300 families worldwide are very happy - the capital-holders.

I'm from the Global South, and most people here are from the North, so to answer your question I'll have to be a little bit vague: I'm a communist [0].

0: Good introduction if anyone needs it: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-m...

Re: Write some software, give it away for free

#232

Post by pjmlp »

nixpulvis wrote: post #32
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…

I think about this a lot. In some ways software is really fundamentally different from things like baking or plumbing. Many bakers love the craft but nobody expects free baked good (except maybe their family). Many plumbers are true craftsmen and take pride helping solve peoples problems, but we don't expect free plumbing. On the other hand, once you write the code, the logic is complete, its closeness to an equation…

Expecting everything for free is a 2000's thing, after the FOSS movement really took off.

Until then the options were we pay for software, we pirate it, or reach out to 30 day demos, freeware, shareware, public domain, which might come with source code or not.

Ironically, what is happening with many nowadays is a return to those days, with code available licenses, or open core.

Re: Write some software, give it away for free

#233

Post by pjmlp »

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…

Same here, whatever you find from me on github, it is GPL, mostly there to show to HR folks that require code samples, and mostly to play out with some feature I wanted to try out in some language, e.g. C++20 modules, WinRT and so on.

Re: Write some software, give it away for free

#234

Post by MyHonestOpinon »

cassianoleal wrote: post #178
jaapz wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A TV-presenter of a fairly popular TV-show with an audience in my country once told an anecdote that they wanted the admission for the audience to be free. But when the tickets were free, a lot less people showed up. When they changed the ticket to be the quite arbitrary amount of 7 EUR, suddenly the theater was full every time.

Back in my home town, we used to have free events all the time. Outdoor concerts, theatre, even indoor concerts and festivals. They were almost always full to the brim. Anecdotes are fun, but not much more than that.

If the artist is someone already famous, the people will always show up.

With a less famous artist price is perceived as a signal. So if it is free, people would think that the show is not worth bothering.

Re: Write some software, give it away for free

#235

Post by technothrasher »

jaapz wrote: post #153
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.

A TV-presenter of a fairly popular TV-show with an audience in my country once told an anecdote that they wanted the admission for the audience to be free. But when the tickets were free, a lot less people showed up. When they changed the ticket to be the quite arbitrary amount of 7 EUR, suddenly the theater was full every time.

I've discovered this when trying to get rid of low value stuff. If I put it up for free, there's usually either no response or a bunch of "I'll take it" and then never showing up. But if I put some minimal price on it, it usually goes quickly.

Re: Write some software, give it away for free

#236

Post by uncircle »

echelon wrote: post #123
jeffparsons wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've regularly heard something similar said of consulting work, too. Many people new to the game worry about charging too much, because if a client is paying more then surely the pressure will be higher. Instead they end up experiencing the opposite: charging a higher rate tends to get them a better kind of client. I'm not sure what the exact lesson is here. Something about stingy people not being nice to work with,…

Not to mention that "OSI open source" is basically sponsored and advocated by the firms that stand to benefit the most: hyperscalers that will embrace, extend, and encrust the thing you built with their monetization tendrils and leave you without a way to make money on it yourself. See: Redis, Elastic, etc. Not an ounce of AWS or GCP is open source, yet they'll happily spin up a managed version of your thing and make…

I agree. Free Software is a good idea in concept, but it is the foremost reason there exist billion dollar tech monopolies today built on the free work of idealists worldwide.

In the age of LLMs and entitled users, I must be selfish and cannot release my work as free software any more. The best of all worlds, for me, is to provide source code along with binaries to paying customers.

Re: Write some software, give it away for free

#238

Post by austinthetaco »

latexr wrote: post #217
carlosjobim wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There’s a lot of entitlement and craziness from paying users too, and those are harder to ignore. Somebody paying for your product is very strong signal. You know that such a person represents real world use cases for your product, and that their issues and feature requests are based on real world problems. Otherwise the chances are low that they would be paying for the software. So helping them with what they want…

> So helping them with what they want could mean that you've just tipped the scale enough for hundreds or thousands of people to become new customers. Sure, if the request is reasonable and sensical. I entertain those and even help them formulate the request better if needed. That’s true of both commercial and open-source. But I’m more talking about the users who demand features. Those who say the tool needs to have…

No other customers asking for the feature is not a signal that its not wanted by many others. Other people suggesting the same thing is a terrible measurement, as suggestions from paying users is already an incredibly small amount of users and some users may just thing it would be nice but not enough to warrant sending in a request. For example: it would be nice if I had a one-click export of my favorites on HN to a markdown. I'm not going to write to them to suggest it because it's not a big deal, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't improve my experience using the the product.

Re: Write some software, give it away for free

#239

Post by jp8399 »

mrandish wrote: post #120

Across the decades of my career in high-tech, I found that repeating the pattern of "Create something you're personally passionate about, then give it away" has directly led to quite remarkable success - not every time, but a surprising amount. Admittedly, I found this out accidentally, since at first it wasn't exactly by choice. It was just what ended up happening after all my original plans failed miserably :-) Whi…

[dead]

Re: Write some software, give it away for free

#240

Post by cortesoft »

carlosjobim wrote: post #215
gchamonlive wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also a big difference between making money to live comfortably and make money to get filthy rich. Lots of people come to tech aiming for the second, so they won't make software so you can buy them a beer. They want to hit it big, and I think this is what smuggles perverse incentives in software development.

Why the hell would it be perverse to want to get rich from something you created? Do you have some kind of right to other people's creative output now? This greed after what other people have seems to be completely boundless.

I don't think it is a crazy opinion to think the desire to be rich is morally troubling. It is a desire to consume more than your share of the world's resources.
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