Write some software, give it away for free

sdenton4

See also: "You don't have to monetize your joy" https://thehabit.co/you-dont-have-to-monetize-your-joy/

kw3b

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.

Topology1

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

msla

> It cost about $600 USD to release, mostly due to two initial security reviews. Can someone expand on this? I've given software away free and it didn't cost me anything.

dnnddidiej

Link to home https://nonogra.ph/

cortesoft

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.

klinquist

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

sinpif

The final three paragraphs really struck a chord with me. Nicely said. Thanks!

fxtentacle

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.

pxtail

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.

zabzonk

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.

2001zhaozhao

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

advael

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

SerCe

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.

johnea

What a really encouraging article! 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.

HanClinto

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: 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/

8note

part 3. dont maintain it. do point in time stuff

gt0

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.

xixixao

Everyone is commenting on the blog but not the service. I remain skeptical: 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.

firesteelrain

I don’t need money but I run some moderately successful open source projects. The users are very demanding.