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Comment by ossworkerrights | Hacker News Reader

Oh look a free clone of a commercial product, let's all jump on it and undermine the devs of postman and insomnia, whom have escaped the 9 to 5 by building awesome tools, because that's what we do: we kill indie development with free clones of small projects.

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Or ya know, since we’re all software developers and many of us need/want a tool like this we could collectively build a community version that we distribute freely and split the labor cost of development and maintenance among the people who use and contribute to it.

yeah let's all split those 8$ it costs, because that's what will get us out of the grind. 8$ a month is less than two coffees, if you need to split such costs among peers then you're probably in the wrong job.

> 8$ a month is less than two coffees

You can buy 1kg of coffee beans with that.

Your comment history shows an interesting grudge against OSS. Do you genuinely think we'd be better off if all software were commercial? I'm asking sincerely.

I really think it's creepy to stalk old people comments before answering them.

It can be helpful to have an understanding of someone’s background and expertise. Talking to a subject matter expert is much different from an undergrad with an opinion. Looking at prior comment helps give a sense of who you are speaking with.

It's called getting context and generally a good idea.

I've seen this particular user's comments frequently enough that their username clicked in my mind. I promise you I don't have the time to go through everyone's post history.

My apologies.

I genuinely believe OSS is great for sharing knowledge, but I also genuinely believe that no other industry out there has managed to play itself at this scale. Every single tool you want is made available for free by devs who burn themselves out writing free code to impress employers. Essentially, OSS devs have fought against corporate only to become trapped by corporate because now software has near zero value. Pretty illogical if you ask me. I'll buy a license for either of the two (postman or insomania), just because this crap needs to stop.

Some of us just do it because we enjoy the process and like to see the things we make get used by other people ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I've never contributed to an OSS project with the goal of impressing an employer or padding a resume.

How do you pay your bills? Or do you just code like 23 hours a day?

No, but I do code sometimes in my spare time or I am sometimes able to utilize my work time to contribute if it's functionality my company needs from an open source project we're using. It's not like you have to sign up for 8-hour shifts in open source software development.

All of my FOSS work has been either directly sponsored by my employers, or stuff I've done in my free time because I wanted to make a thing exist for my own purposes. I don't know anyone who's burned themselves out writing free code to impress employers, so I guess I just don't see it the way you describe.

Didn't insomnia start as a free clone of postman?

It seems like insomnia is still open source, and the paid features are just cloud services.

You're complaining about the very thing that allows OSS to exist.

coughlinuxcough

coughlinuxcough what? linux vs corporate is not the same as literally cloning every small piece of software out there for the sake of getting a job and glory.

Postman has raised over $50M since they launched, they're not exactly two guys working out of a garage anymore. At what point do you classify them as "corporate"?

Anyone who creates a small but useful product should expect clones to appear.

By your logic Postman itself is undermining the devs of curl and wget.

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