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Comment by croes | Hacker News Reader

Wrong analogy. You can walk into a store where usually you can take items he made for free, not the store owner. After one month, he puts a sign on the shelf "If you like what you see, you can send me money to my bank account". So where is the difference for the store owner between before and after the sign? Before he didn't get any money, after he don't get any money.

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If you give me your old TV for free and I use it, we both are happy. If you give me your old TV and I turn arround and sell it for 400$, you're probably not happy, despite you not getting any money in either case.

Or, in case of your store example: The store owner does not have a store "for free". He still needs to pay the bills and be there. By suddenly earning money with his goodwill you're basically monetizing the space he is gifting to you.

Because, if the store owner's business model is

> People are welcome to offer items for free on my shelf space, but if they make money based off the items people got from those shelves, then I get a cut

Then, if you accept a donation because of such items, then you pay. Because it was stated up front and it's part of the owner's business model.

As to how it effects the store owner. Let's say the store owner does not allow free items on their shelves at the moment. And they make enough money to pay their bills, plus a little extra. The owner decides to allow free items on their shelves, with the above caveat. They figure they will make less money overall (free items now take the place of items non-free item), but still make enough to live on. Only now, just enough, no extra.

If all the people that give their items for free + donations decide not to pay a share of their donations, then the business owner does _not_ make enough to pay their bills... because the assumption of people paying that money was built into the decision to allow free items in the first place.

So there _is_ a different to the store owner.

Obviously, Google doesn't make "just enough to pay their bills", so the analogy is loose... but the concept of people following the rules that were set out at the beginning being built into the business model, and the decision to support that model at all, doesn't change because of that.

Because the store owner & seller agreed to the former and not the latter. It’s the agreement they already made. If they want to change the agreement, probably both parties have to agree to the changes.

Right, but with that analogy, you have his store predicated on a cheaper lease from the landlord because he said he wouldn't be making any money off his items.

But now he is accepting donations for the items people are taking "for free", and is therefore in breach of the lease agreement he signed with his landlord.

If you don’t like the store policies, you may be able to find an accommodating store.

Can’t do that with the app stores, hence your analogy falls apart due to the lack of available competition.

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