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Everyone opinions will differ but for that it's worth I personally don't see the problem with a referral link. Maybe it should have been labelled as such, just for the sake of transparency. But since they are recommending a Digital Oceans Ubuntu droplet then it seems kind of appropriate for that recommendation to include a referral.

It's really no worse than having adverts or Amazon referrals. In fact it's less intrusive than the former.

> I personally don't see the problem with a referral link. Maybe it should have been labelled as such, just for the sake of transparency.

I fully agree. I wouldn't remove it at all, just add a a mention that it is your referral link.

This is free software folks. If the coffers aren't held out with donation links, I see nothing wrong with him getting a cut elsewhere.

In fact, the nature of this software is unthanked work and relatively unknown to the general public. It addresses a real issue, and it addresses it for free.

"Cheesy" is criticizing him for the referral link.

No, it's criticizing him for not being forthright about it. I think it's important for people to know whether or not their activity is helping financially support someone. I may specifically want to support the project maintainer, so I will try to remember to use their referral link later if I don't have the time to do it now. Or I may specifically not want to support the maintainer, so I will circumvent their referral link. Either way, my job is made a lot easier if the maintainer discloses that the link is a referral link.

I removed it, I thought it was obvious once you clicked on the link. again, I'm a PhD student, I live at the poverty line and host this project myself.

Honestly, you should have left it up there and told the first few to go <strike>fuck themselves</strike> find something better to do than criticize someone who gave them a FOSS program.

Yeah, things that are free need to make money somehow, hence ads and ref links. It's asinine to think that a person should just give up their own cash to provide a free service. It's the epitome of using someone as a means to an end; and you're the one getting used.

I do a lot of research, advocacy, and editorial work which is very critical of many powerful companies; I have to be sure there is no accidental impression I am "for" or "against" anybody or benefitting financially in any way from my research. that is actually why I changed it.

any sane person can see that releasing my intellectual property for free wasn't an evil scheme to make $.25 from digital ocean. ;-)

How much do people get from these kinda referral links anyways? I feel that if you're only gonna get a few clickthroughs, then its not worth putting the link there and have people judge you / your intentions.

He admitted it in his response here:

>in response to referral link comment: I host the site on my own dime so I didn't think getting $.25 from DO would make me a bad person...also, I really don't have time to learn windows to make instructions. I'm a grad student and make slightly above minimum wage annually, if I were to be evil and greedy I'd probably not be doing what I do with my life. I'm giving away thousands of hours of work and data I could make money off of doing evil things.

>its not worth putting the link there and have people judge you / your intentions.

This makes no sense to me. His intentions are clear. Far more clear than the intentions of third party HTTP requests on the big websites you visit. And you didn't even need to hear it from him himself to know that he hosts his site and needs a few shekels to support it. Of course, you're entitled to your own opinion, but I could really care less if people "judge" me for a DO link, and I hope the tilbert feels the same way.

I don't understand in general this hate for people who post referral links. Do you not hover over a link before you click it? See all the garbage appended to the query string in the URL? If I don't want to click it, I don't. I don't hate the person for adding a referral link. I don't understand the hate for the people who do. Again, you're entitled to your own opinion but I'm not a fan of this minutiae being hammered in this HN thread. I'll just go to the website on a clean window and search the same product/website/service.

Finally, the third party advertisers are judging him far more harshly for this software, anyways. Their corrupt model is (in a small way) subverted. If he was worried about "judgment" he wouldn't have offered this software in the first place.

Huh? What provoked this strong response? I'm not hating anyone here. I'm just thinking about this from his / my potential perspective where if you've already put so much effort into the project expecting zero returns, why 'taint' your own product? Its like putting ads on personal blogs that's gonna get you a few bucks in a year. Maybe I'm just particular about these kinda stuff and want to keep things 'pure' and 'clean'.

I didn't find the response strong at all.

It was far less strong than the initial attack on his adding a referral link in the first place.

A referral link is (arguably, again, opinions here ;) ) much cleaner and more transparent than having your analytics data being pushed out to a dossier tracking your behavior, emotions, and extrapolating patterns on the two.

You can hover your cursor on a referral link to see what it is. You can even open up a Javascript console and see where the true location of any given link is taking you to, should you click on it.

You can't see what's being done with third party gathering information about you.

And funnily (read: ironically) enough, its the entire point of this software in the first place. I repeat that I'm confused about the concern over this minutiae considering the fact that when you go look up something online, someone is getting paid in some way, shape, or form. I don't mean to come off strong, and I apologize if you took it in that way.

A referrer gets paid in creation of a consumer whereas an advertising company gets paid as a spy, essentially. Using Amazon as an example, isn't the purpose of the service to sell you something? Instead of selling you as a product?[0]

[0] https://medium.com/@unsetbit/dear-amazon-you-dropped-somethi...

thank you.

I haven't used windows in 15 years and couldn't find anybody to write the directions for me, so I went with snarky over spending time figuring out how to install python3 and mysql on windows. ;-)

in response to referral link comment: I host the site on my own dime so I didn't think getting $.25 from DO would make me a bad person...also, I really don't have time to learn windows to make instructions. I'm a grad student and make slightly above minimum wage annually, if I were to be evil and greedy I'd probably not be doing what I do with my life. I'm giving away thousands of hours of work and data I could make money off of doing evil things.

---

I think you guys/gals have a point, the referral link is gone. ;-)

I think the better solution would have been to just disclose that it was a referral link.

I can't speak for getting a Linux cloud server, but I've seen plenty of recommendations to use a VM when trying to use some software on Windows. Unless you're specifically writing C# or using IIS or SQL Server I don't necessarily believe it's bad advice. In the coming years, with the way C# is changing, Linux/FreeBSD may become the desired platform to run C# code (just like it is for Java.)

>> I've seen plenty of recommendations to use a VM when trying to use some software on Windows...

Is that a sign that developers are starting to not care about Windows?

personally, I feel the real magic of VMs is I can play around, keep notes, royally screw up my system doing something idiotic, trash the machine, spin up a new one, and resume from my notes. I'm old enough to remember the dark days of RHL CDs running on actual computers...

If I was consulting on a flat fee, that's the advice - virtualize to the most compatible OS - I'd typically offer because it is the most likely to deliver the most business value over the long run. On the other hand, if I was charging by the hour, I'd spend my time and the customer's dollars creating a one-off installation that is likely to break and need future $upport when components change.

On the third hand, if the task was trivial, then there would be no reason to complain about a lack of bespoke Windows instructions, since they would almost write themselves. Of course if bespoke Windows instructions are non-trivial, then obviously it's hard to see merit in the complaint.

it is non-trivial for me as don't use windows, and I already spent a fair amount of blood, sweat, and tears developing the code.

Your instructions are literally just "install this software". Windows is not so different that the instructions can't be just "install all this software". We can install software without apt perfectly fine.

yes, but I don't own a windows license so I can't test it. linux is free so I can.

So clone the project: https://github.com/timlib/webxray , add Windows instructions, and send a pull request. In true idiomatic Windows tradition, even command line cooties can be avoided: https://desktop.github.com/

I agree, hence the complaint lacks merit.

You just wasted a lot of time on criticizing this guys windows instructions. Good Job!

I type pretty quickly.