It was a reasonable question. No reason to be harsh like this. Let’s keep a culture where it’s ok to ask questions.

The features help customers. Charging people is how people pay for the features. No one is helped by being charged, beyond a general "obviously money motivates the vendor to maintain the product".

I'll repeat it: just looking for ways to charge people is a sickness.

A whole lot of people commenting on HN suffer from that sickness.

The answers to the questions I suggested help decide whether it's driven by creating value for customers or yet another manifestation of the parasitic "extraction" mentality (aforementioned "sickness").

I even quoted the part to which I was responding, yeah?

Yeah.

I think an API facilitates abuse, because it can be more easily automated and so you could easily add a lot of load to your server. Someone will create a script to pull all records one by one very quickly, maybe they will want to export a huge dataset daily which they did not do I the app. New workflows. Charging is also a way to encourage good habits. Some people overdo it though.

It's not a sickness to put a value on a product or service.

A public API is going to incur additional testing, documentation, and support. Charge accordingly.

exposing API gives customers flexibility to build their own tailored interface to your service rather than being stuck with your sometimes shitty interface.

I like the analogy of a restaurant. API is sort of like takeout order, here is your food packed in a bag now do whatever with it. Not having a takeout option means customers are stuck with whatever service you provide in the restaurant.

What a ridiculous comment. He’s running a business, not a charity. He’s already determined that this offering will be useful to customers. He’s asking for insights on what to charge. Nothing wrong with that.