Hacker Monthly #6 is out

We are giving away free digital copy (plus 1 year digital subscription) to the comment contributors starting from this issue.

Also, the article contributors gets a print copy plus 1 year digital subscription.

I'm a BSD kind of guy, so if I was asked, I would still give it freely, anyway. I'd rather help someone out, and I'm already giving what I say away freely right here. It seems kind of silly to me that someone could read what I say freely here, but I'd expect payment elsewhere.

Then again, that's just me. Some people want to get paid for everything. Tomorrow, I'm guest lecturing an English class at a university, for example. I've found two reactions to this, when I've told people: One group says "Oh, how exciting!" and the other says "Are you getting paid?" Here's a follow up I got to my answer, yesterday: "Too many people from your generation have too clever of an answer for that question."

Both are valid reactions. I just happen to think that the first fits me and my goals better.

I was wondering the same thing. I also gave my permission, but have no idea if it was exercised. We shouldn't have to wonder.

All comments should be free to all, on the website, retroactively to the first issue. This was implied when permission was solicited.

Thanks. I've also created a HN thread for the latest issue: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1856111

also since the debate PDF is free to download, Cheng Soon didn't make a clickable table of contents for it on the site, but here are links to original articles:

Programming Languages? http://postabon.posterous.com/why-i-chose-common-lisp-over-p... http://thecleancoder.blogspot.com/2010/08/why-clojure.html

Key Decisions Google Founders Made? http://www.quora.com/What-were-the-4-or-5-key-decisions-that... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1502765

New York or San Francisco? http://adgrok.com/new-york-will-always-be-a-tech-backwater-i... http://kellysutton.tumblr.com/post/901431677/choosing-new-yo...

Git or Mercurial? http://reprog.wordpress.com/2010/05/12/still-hatin-on-git-no... http://yehudakatz.com/2010/05/13/common-git-workflows/ http://blog.extracheese.org/2010/05/why-i-switched-to-git-fr...

We couldn't charge any lower than that. If you do the math, we actually don't make any money from the print subscription plan.

I don't think that is a valid comparison, doesn't take into account scale where the marginal cost is very small. It's not uncommon to see $20+ niche magazines in comparison to something like wired which is far cheaper but arguably is creating the same value.

As a pretty active Hacker News member, I think HM can be worth $120/yr.

Here's my particular case. I've been a subscriber since the third issue and 90% of the magazine content I've seen on HN, but the presentation and centralization of the best is of wonderful value. They really do a nice job on the design front. The issues also function like a library of cool articles you can show to a friend or colleague and say "Here's HN in a box, at least one particular filtering of it." I have brought at least a couple contributors to Hacker News, just because they read through an issue of Hacker Monthly.

Price and value are not the same thing. Google, for instance, charges me $0 to use gmail.

Whenever you hear the word value, you should ask yourself, "of value for what, and to whom?" The hedge fund manager who reads the WSJ may get millions of dollars worth of value out of it. The business school student may only get the $199/yr he pays.

Yes, it's absolutely worth it.

Really? I mean, I guess I've never purchased a Hacker Monthly, either, but $10 seems pretty standard for a magazine. Then again, I'm going by the cover price of something like a video game magazine, the only ones I've ever really bought. I don't think it's too exorbitant.

You could give yc startups a discount.