Please don't fulminate or post flame bait on HN. This low-effort comment started just the kind of flamewar we're trying to avoid on HN. Please take a moment to read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46529364 and marked it off topic.
Please don't post dunks like this here. HN is for curious conversation and the guidelines ask us to be kind. We have no idea whether the thing they had in mind when they asked that question 8 years ago is relevant to what they think about the current topic. You could ask them rather than piling on like this.
I didn't ask how to do a bait and switch to offer a good free product and later ask for more money or else I'm going to make it worse. But I guess nuance is hard to understand.
Also it's always funny when someone tries to look up your past instead of giving convincing arguments.
There is no bait and switch and it's ridiculous to suggest there is.
They have a free product and a paid product. They've used the documentation as an awareness channel for the paid product. The paid product influences and pays for the free product. A tail as old as time.
They're not asking you to buy the paid product and they're not saying they are going to make it worse. Did you even read thread? He literally says "I totally see the value in the feature and I would like to find a way to add it."
Not prioritizing it now does not make the product worse, it just doesn't make it better in this particular way today.
Which of those are evolving at the rate of frameworks?
BTW I'm of the opinion that frontend tooling developers should actually try to contribute things to HTML and CSS instead of building "component libraries" on top of them.
If the native controls were good and if the browsers allowed using "uniformly styled" versions of them then there would be no good reason for such libraries to exist.
Your comments in this thread are terrible, all of them. You are part of the reason why working on open source projects is so hard for people who obviously want to do good in this world. Check Adam's work: his work has been a net positive for the OSS community. Go spread your poison and nasty comments elsewhere please.
I like how we recognize this necessity to our biology but commit everyone to Hunger Games-lite performative, fiat (by decree alone), economics due to lack of political action in the face of some walking dead politicians who can't get through a day or week without handfuls of pills, they're that pathetic.
We are a deeply unserious society.
Anyway; good luck going viral online, everyone. I got lucky, have had generational wealth in my back pocket since birth, am off the hook for you by our social norms. Hopefully it works out for you because I and the rest of us won't be engaged in political action on your behalf. Dance for the organ!
I think the part you're missing here is that the author here is under no requirement to accept changes to their project and everyone else is welcome to fork it if they disagree with choices made by the author.
The author did not in fact, make the project worse, all they did was not accept a change, and that is entirely different than making it worse.
Even those who stood to benefit from the change have not received a degraded experience in comparison to the current state of affairs, but the same experience as the current state of affairs, since no change occurred. It is truly within the author's rights to do this, in any case.
One should avoid a sense of entitlement to additional and ever-increasing quantities of free work when free work has already been done.
You keep repeating that he makes his project worse – an active action – while in fact he did not do anything at all, he just refused to change something.
The answer to "how should free things make money" is to not make them free. Any counterexamples are very fortunate. I don't know why people insist on giving away things for free while they actually desire to make money from those things. If the thing is valuable enough, someone will pay for it. Else...not
Please don't fulminate or post flame bait on HN. This low-effort comment started just the kind of flamewar we're trying to avoid on HN. Please take a moment to read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46529364 and marked it off topic.
[flagged]
Please don't post dunks like this here. HN is for curious conversation and the guidelines ask us to be kind. We have no idea whether the thing they had in mind when they asked that question 8 years ago is relevant to what they think about the current topic. You could ask them rather than piling on like this.
I didn't ask how to do a bait and switch to offer a good free product and later ask for more money or else I'm going to make it worse. But I guess nuance is hard to understand.
Also it's always funny when someone tries to look up your past instead of giving convincing arguments.
Arguments for... somebody wanting to get paid for their work? What are you doing?
6 replies →
There is no bait and switch and it's ridiculous to suggest there is.
They have a free product and a paid product. They've used the documentation as an awareness channel for the paid product. The paid product influences and pays for the free product. A tail as old as time.
They're not asking you to buy the paid product and they're not saying they are going to make it worse. Did you even read thread? He literally says "I totally see the value in the feature and I would like to find a way to add it."
Not prioritizing it now does not make the product worse, it just doesn't make it better in this particular way today.
How is this hard to understand?
1 reply →
But nobody is making tailwind worse. After closing this PR it is exactly as good as it was before the PR was opened
Here's a convincing argument: Pay me for some of my labor or you stop getting labor at all.
3 replies →
That's not a bait and switch my dude, lmao. Bait and switch only applies when the initial price is something other than $0 but still low.
Did you really go looking over years of their post history for this retort?
GP could have remembered simlevesque's past posts and then just double-checked.
The hypocrisy the GP noticed is strong enough to warrant a mention.
1 reply →
hm, families need to eat.
Then why is HTTP, CSS and HTML free ? It's creators need to eat too. Should they start charging for it ?
Tailwind CSS is free and funded by extras like Tailwind Plus.
HTML and CSS are free to use but the W3C is funded by membership fees.
Which of those are evolving at the rate of frameworks?
BTW I'm of the opinion that frontend tooling developers should actually try to contribute things to HTML and CSS instead of building "component libraries" on top of them.
If the native controls were good and if the browsers allowed using "uniformly styled" versions of them then there would be no good reason for such libraries to exist.
Your comments in this thread are terrible, all of them. You are part of the reason why working on open source projects is so hard for people who obviously want to do good in this world. Check Adam's work: his work has been a net positive for the OSS community. Go spread your poison and nasty comments elsewhere please.
2 replies →
eeeh.. those are standards, not products.
I like how we recognize this necessity to our biology but commit everyone to Hunger Games-lite performative, fiat (by decree alone), economics due to lack of political action in the face of some walking dead politicians who can't get through a day or week without handfuls of pills, they're that pathetic.
We are a deeply unserious society.
Anyway; good luck going viral online, everyone. I got lucky, have had generational wealth in my back pocket since birth, am off the hook for you by our social norms. Hopefully it works out for you because I and the rest of us won't be engaged in political action on your behalf. Dance for the organ!
[flagged]
WTF?
So your answer to "how should open source projects achieve financial sustainability" is "don't even try"?
When you start making your open source project worse for your users because you are not making enough out of it I'll choose to use something else.
There's a point where it's too much and it just feels like a trojan horse when later you stop caring for your free users.
I think the part you're missing here is that the author here is under no requirement to accept changes to their project and everyone else is welcome to fork it if they disagree with choices made by the author.
The author did not in fact, make the project worse, all they did was not accept a change, and that is entirely different than making it worse.
Even those who stood to benefit from the change have not received a degraded experience in comparison to the current state of affairs, but the same experience as the current state of affairs, since no change occurred. It is truly within the author's rights to do this, in any case.
One should avoid a sense of entitlement to additional and ever-increasing quantities of free work when free work has already been done.
2 replies →
I notice that you didn't answer their question: How should OSS be funded?
9 replies →
You keep repeating that he makes his project worse – an active action – while in fact he did not do anything at all, he just refused to change something.
The answer to "how should free things make money" is to not make them free. Any counterexamples are very fortunate. I don't know why people insist on giving away things for free while they actually desire to make money from those things. If the thing is valuable enough, someone will pay for it. Else...not
You're existing in hyper-capitalism. So yes big surprise, people need to make money.