I started out in the BBS and demoscene of the 90s. The glory days of computing in my opinion, because of the technical innovation (people were making magic with 7mhz processors) and how the community arranged itself. e.g, some ANSI artists in the artpack scene went on to become legit artists, but nobody was sitting around grinding ANSIs to make millions or raise capital. I think about that era in my own open source work today, I just work on what I enjoy and find interesting and whatever happens happens as long as I can pay the bills.
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.
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 software developer. I have loved being able to support myself and my family by doing my favorite activity. It has let me enjoy going to work every day for over 20 years.
I also don't think I should charge for random code work that I do for fun, though. I am not trying to monetize every minute of my day... but I do want to monetize enough of it that I can pay my mortgage, buy food, save for my retirement, and have some fun along the way.
I don't know exactly where I am going with this, but it is my gut reaction when I see a post about how horrible it is to make money off of writing software. It has to be more nuanced than that.
I think that thanks to the behavior of corporations a lot of people have a very unhealthy association with money. Corporations engage in a grossly unethical fashion to try to coercively exploit every single penny from people, and that's generally disgusting. I think that makes 'normal' people want to go in the exact opposite direction and you end up where we are in this discussion.
But if you just look at money as what it is - a simple means of exchange, then charging money doesn't need to be some sort of parasitic or exploitative profit-maximization thing. It's simply a means for people to be able to support themselves while doing something they enjoy, without having to rely on the wholly unreliable and potentially undignified behaviors in relying on donations.
This is all further compounded by governments making it difficult for people to transfer money between themselves openly + anonymously online, let alone on a global level. Actually selling things has some pretty significant hurdles to overcome. Easing global anonymous transactions would greatly lower the pain involved in selling stuff 'ethically'. Of course there's already one tech that had the potential for this, but hasn't yet quite lived up to its potential.
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)
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.
That's completely and absolutely fine, if you are millionaire and/or have other well paid job then.. well done, congratulations and enjoy your newly found hobby.
BUT - I'm capable to tinker with my car a bit, to service and repair my bike, to bake a bread - BUT I'm not visiting mechanic shops, bike service shops and bakeries in my city telling owners that they should work for free and give away results of their work.
As this is FOSS, I don't see why you need the security review (by who, with what qualifications?). Any users can look at the source code and arrange their own reviews as they think necessary.
even better is to grow with your users, monetize ethically, and make a lot of money anyway simply by being very big and through other routes like enterprise
A lot of comments can't help but mention the constant looming threat of potentially permanent destitution that pervades our society. It's increasingly hard to understand the position of people who think that this is a feature, excepting of course those very few with the resources to use that pressure rather than be driven by it
I'm not sure what you mean by "permanent destitution" but certainly life is full of struggles. It's not just a feature of our society, but of the universe itself. Without struggle and pain there is no life. Fighting entropy is a constant battle. The good news is, life has been winning the battle for many millions of years.
Well, in our current world, one species of apes has, by banding together into coordinated groups and allowing individuals to specialize in building various skills and knowledge, discovered numerous complex mechanical properties of the universe and created technologies that have over time accumulated to obviate a giant subset of struggles that define the lives of most living organisms, and certainly comprised the majority of those apes' activity and struggle in all but the most recent few millenia, itself less than a percent of the time their species has existed, effectively eliminated the overwhelming majority of threats to their survival that doesn't arise from the activity of other members of their species, and even made some progress toward eliminating those. I think you'll find that this is a fairly weird position for a species to find themselves in, but a consistent strategic element of this success has been that periods of greater discovery, economic activity, and improvement of conditions have mostly come from increasing the number of apes that are, rather than desperate and focused on their short-term survival, free to pursue weird projects like figuring out how plants grow and change over time, how electricity propagates through various materials, how to build a better mousetrap, etc. Now, most existential threats to these "humans" are of their own making, both on a micro and macro level. Desperate humans commit crimes or wage wars over resources. On a larger scale, incredible advances in technology have created weaponry capable of wiping out entire groups of humans or ecosystems, possibly even planet-wide ones, on a number of different timescales. Meanwhile, an incredible amount of these things are busy toiling away at things they call "jobs" in order to make "money", a system entirely constructed by humans, and now those people increasingly feel that this arrangement isn't benefiting them and doesn't incidentally create opportunities to do things they consider meaningful, and a bunch of loud and powerful voices among the ever-shrinking segment that does not feel this way are increasingly loudly announcing at every turn that they'd very much like to reneg on their end of the bargain, deem those other people unnecessary, and implicitly, eliminate them. I speak of "destitution" because this is a name for the means by which the current arrangements among humans achieve this elimination most often. In fact, there's no natural universal law that says that we can't use this "economy" thing we've invented to double down on the basic strategy that got us here, guarantee access to a small share of resources and technology to everyone to a degree that provides them the freedom to specialize at their leisure, possibly going down dead ends, or possibly solving real problems out of sheer curiosity or idiosyncratic obsessions, starting businesses about it, or joining ascetic sects to hunker down and research together, as humans have basically always done. Instead, we have for some reason arranged several systems to create holes in the social fabric. Circumstances in which several things going wrong can cause someone to lose a job, their home, and eventually their freedom entirely. This seems sub-optimal, and it's at this point entirely a choice we've collectively made. We have some evidence of what outcomes may result from such disparities in priorities, and generally solutions that involve eliminating the threat of destitution result in more economic activity, discovery, and the thriving of apes more generally, and solutions that don't involve lots of murder and strife. I know which kind of outcome I prefer, and so I think it's quite wise to consider strategies of the former kind
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 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, perhaps?
I like the idea of creating a OSS project, and then build extra on top of it for selling.
The OSS part ensured that even if I went full Sam Altman, the user will still have an absolute baseline they can fallback on. And given how lazy I am, the OSS is often basically 70% of the project. This also has the benefit that the significant part of the code can be audited for security/etc, sometimes even for free.
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 personally give away free software, and actually don't get bothered by comments as much. The catch? I write the software to fulfill my needs, and may or may not take anyone's suggestions at heart.
If they are so inclined, they can fork it and patch it. It's out there after all. As long as they obey the terms of the license I put forth, it's all fair.
"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."
That's in line with my experience on both consulting and selling software. The more they pay, the easier and reasonable they are to work with.
Years ago, I put out some free software and there were a lot of users who seemed to be on a power trip to show me who is the boss. I assumed they were some lonely guys in a basement who had nothing else going on, so they best they could come up with is to beat up an author of the only software they can afford.
To see a millennial generations person write about developing software that you want or need, and then let other people run that software.
I know these words aren't allowed on HN, but this idea was originally known as the "free software movement".
The idea is that individuals and institutions than need or want certain software, develop the software, and then share it, binary and source.
You add to this the concept of "copyleft", which requires that any change to the software, that is distributed, must also be shared with others, and you have the GPL license.
Businesses, schools, agencies, need email, browsers, accounting, instead of paying for these, what if the people who need them develop than, and share the results?
> it really does turn your passion from something that you actively seek out because you enjoy it, to something that you seek out because you want to meet a quota or turn a profit. You're always chasing the next quarter or the next thousand customers.
Those changes in motivation that came from monetizing the software are exactly what happens to "free software" that transitions to "open source". Developed for profit, not for use.
Again, it's really really encouraging to see a thinking person rediscover this concept.
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:
I used to do this kind of image recognition for a living, but I've been out of the business for a little while now. I had some ideas for a different approach from what I've done in the past and decided to code it up. This version is far better than anything else I've ever done -- especially for scanning against busy backgrounds or with occlusions, and also for noticing fine differences between otherwise difficult-to-distinguish printings.
I didn't have any interested customers waiting for this, so -- much like the OP -- decided to create an experiment and release it open source. I'm not opposed to having paths to monetize it (for people who want to license it for closed-source commercial projects), but I'm not trying to commercialize it so much as I would love to see how far we can take it with open-source.
I don't know which path I should take with this.
The biggest downside is that I feel like I've had a hard time getting people to be as interested in this project as I would have expected -- I believe this truly is the best identification software available (I've built some benchmarks to test it [0]), and maybe the market is just a bit flooded for such things (?), but I suspect that one very strong problem is that if you don't charge for something, then there is a perceived lack of value.
Sometimes I wonder if I would have more interest in this project if I _weren't_ trying to give it away.
For me, that's been the most negative aspect about releasing this for free so far.
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 don't think software developers should feel any need to give away their efforts than any other professional should.
FOSS has created pricing race to the bottom in software, and taken away financial incentive for improvement, it's not a 100% net positive.
> Realistically though, I'm not going to build software for free any more than I'm going to tidy someone's garden for free.
I think the better analogy here would be to tidy the public park for free.
It's about doing something for other people, being generous, making the world better with your genrousity.
I think that in itself is something worthwile to try.
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.
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.)
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.
To repurpose a quote from Walt Disney, I don’t make software to make money, I make money to make more software.
I want my hobby project to be my job, because I don’t want to work for someone else. I want creative control, freedom to explore and ship ideas, and financial stability.
The only way to get there, that I can see, is to charge for my work.
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.
103 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 75.0 ms ] threadhttps://thehabit.co/you-dont-have-to-monetize-your-joy/
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.
Can someone expand on this? I've given software away free and it didn't cost me anything.
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 software developer. I have loved being able to support myself and my family by doing my favorite activity. It has let me enjoy going to work every day for over 20 years.
I also don't think I should charge for random code work that I do for fun, though. I am not trying to monetize every minute of my day... but I do want to monetize enough of it that I can pay my mortgage, buy food, save for my retirement, and have some fun along the way.
I don't know exactly where I am going with this, but it is my gut reaction when I see a post about how horrible it is to make money off of writing software. It has to be more nuanced than that.
But if you just look at money as what it is - a simple means of exchange, then charging money doesn't need to be some sort of parasitic or exploitative profit-maximization thing. It's simply a means for people to be able to support themselves while doing something they enjoy, without having to rely on the wholly unreliable and potentially undignified behaviors in relying on donations.
This is all further compounded by governments making it difficult for people to transfer money between themselves openly + anonymously online, let alone on a global level. Actually selling things has some pretty significant hurdles to overcome. Easing global anonymous transactions would greatly lower the pain involved in selling stuff 'ethically'. Of course there's already one tech that had the potential for this, but hasn't yet quite lived up to its potential.
https://www.github.com/klinquist/notesync
BUT - I'm capable to tinker with my car a bit, to service and repair my bike, to bake a bread - BUT I'm not visiting mechanic shops, bike service shops and bakeries in my city telling owners that they should work for free and give away results of their work.
I'm not sure what the exact lesson is here. Something about stingy people not being nice to work with, perhaps?
Using GPL or MIT or whatever open or free license you prefer does not mean it's OK to get bullied.
It's perfectly fine to not accept entitlement and still let others use or even build on your work, if you want to.
You have the freedom to shape the interactions you want even if nobody else does it this way.
The OSS part ensured that even if I went full Sam Altman, the user will still have an absolute baseline they can fallback on. And given how lazy I am, the OSS is often basically 70% of the project. This also has the benefit that the significant part of the code can be audited for security/etc, sometimes even for free.
"Be entitled to whatever one is willing to give upstream" is my motto.
If they are so inclined, they can fork it and patch it. It's out there after all. As long as they obey the terms of the license I put forth, it's all fair.
That's in line with my experience on both consulting and selling software. The more they pay, the easier and reasonable they are to work with.
Years ago, I put out some free software and there were a lot of users who seemed to be on a power trip to show me who is the boss. I assumed they were some lonely guys in a basement who had nothing else going on, so they best they could come up with is to beat up an author of the only software they can afford.
To see a millennial generations person write about developing software that you want or need, and then let other people run that software.
I know these words aren't allowed on HN, but this idea was originally known as the "free software movement".
The idea is that individuals and institutions than need or want certain software, develop the software, and then share it, binary and source.
You add to this the concept of "copyleft", which requires that any change to the software, that is distributed, must also be shared with others, and you have the GPL license.
Businesses, schools, agencies, need email, browsers, accounting, instead of paying for these, what if the people who need them develop than, and share the results?
> it really does turn your passion from something that you actively seek out because you enjoy it, to something that you seek out because you want to meet a quota or turn a profit. You're always chasing the next quarter or the next thousand customers.
Those changes in motivation that came from monetizing the software are exactly what happens to "free software" that transitions to "open source". Developed for profit, not for use.
Again, it's really really encouraging to see a thinking person rediscover this concept.
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:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHieOcmC7Dw
I used to do this kind of image recognition for a living, but I've been out of the business for a little while now. I had some ideas for a different approach from what I've done in the past and decided to code it up. This version is far better than anything else I've ever done -- especially for scanning against busy backgrounds or with occlusions, and also for noticing fine differences between otherwise difficult-to-distinguish printings.
I didn't have any interested customers waiting for this, so -- much like the OP -- decided to create an experiment and release it open source. I'm not opposed to having paths to monetize it (for people who want to license it for closed-source commercial projects), but I'm not trying to commercialize it so much as I would love to see how far we can take it with open-source.
I don't know which path I should take with this.
The biggest downside is that I feel like I've had a hard time getting people to be as interested in this project as I would have expected -- I believe this truly is the best identification software available (I've built some benchmarks to test it [0]), and maybe the market is just a bit flooded for such things (?), but I suspect that one very strong problem is that if you don't charge for something, then there is a perceived lack of value.
Sometimes I wonder if I would have more interest in this project if I _weren't_ trying to give it away.
For me, that's been the most negative aspect about releasing this for free so far.
[0] - https://blog.hanclin.to/posts/gh-26/
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 don't think software developers should feel any need to give away their efforts than any other professional should.
FOSS has created pricing race to the bottom in software, and taken away financial incentive for improvement, it's not a 100% net positive.
I think the better analogy here would be to tidy the public park for free. It's about doing something for other people, being generous, making the world better with your genrousity. I think that in itself is something worthwile to try.
A. Either it will remain obscure and not see any real use
B. (Less likely) It will get abused to hell before it is shutdown.
Claims of removing violating content “immediately” seem unrealistic under decent usage, unless that $600 can grow unbounded.
I want my hobby project to be my job, because I don’t want to work for someone else. I want creative control, freedom to explore and ship ideas, and financial stability.
The only way to get there, that I can see, is to charge for my work.
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.
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.