Comment by nilamo
4 months ago
That's a strange mindset, IMO. I'd be pissed if I had to pay $0.10 every time I turned a rachet, and it's weird to expect companies to have usage-based monetization on the tools they've made for others.
4 months ago
That's a strange mindset, IMO. I'd be pissed if I had to pay $0.10 every time I turned a rachet, and it's weird to expect companies to have usage-based monetization on the tools they've made for others.
An analogy to making a physical tool doesn’t really work because we have to basically describe what software is in terms of exceptions to the analogy.
If I had a ratchet that, every time I turned it, I had to pay $.1, but I’d gotten it for free, but it was basically free to replicate, but the person who designed it did have to spend some significant work on R&D for the thing… I have no idea how I’d price that or how I’d feel.
oh you really butchered that metaphor.
The ratchet isn't what's getting paid in the metaphor, it's the person turning it.
There's always a time-sink cost to a public project.
Anyway, there's definitely a public good argument to turn certain software projects into utilities.
I don’t think that’s what they were going for. They said “ I'd be pissed if I had to pay $0.10 every time I turned a rachet” so the person turning the ratchet is the one paying. Who they pay to is unknown.
2 replies →
did you buy the ratchet?
that's why you'd be pissed.
If you were given the ratchet and then someone wanted to charge you every time you use it you would also be pissed.
> If you were given the ratchet and then someone wanted to charge you every time you use it you would also be pissed.
People gotta eat. If someone's making valuable tools and giving them away, they still need to get paid somehow. If people aren't voluntarily tipping them enough, then something's gotta give.
There have been too many stories of open source developers basically burning themselves out for years, then it comes out that they're barely scraping by and can't take it anymore.
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No I wouldn’t, I would say “yeah that makes sense doesn’t it”
In this example the ratchet manufacturer would be giving them away for free though, and then get pissed when no one volunteers to pay.
Let me introduce you to Splunk and enterprise software in general
You effectively do pay per turn of the ratchet. It doesn't last forever, will eventually break, and so you can amortize the cost of the device over the number of turns you expect it to make to get the per-turn cost.
Software on the other hand does not naturally wear out, in the same way physical objects do.