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Comment by endominus | Hacker News Reader

"The lower your prices, the more entitled the user base you seem to draw." Not literally, perhaps, but with a wider net you do catch more of the louder, more annoying or insulting voices. I've seen this repeated too many times already (RIP FairEmail).

Is this simply an endemic issue in the software space? I can imagine a great deal of people thinking it's not worth it to financially support a project or plugin they rely on because "I could make that myself in a weekend if I wanted to" and using that rationalization to justify being rude to the project's maintainer. Or perhaps the true believers in open source think that people should feed themselves on ideology rather than bread. Is there something else going on?

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> Is this simply an endemic issue in the software space?

No. It’s everywhere. I don’t know if it’s a societal thing, I suspect more innate. Though individual cultures may modulate it to different degrees.

The lower the price, the less valuable it is and the more people are willing to make jackass demands. You want respect? You have to charge enough.

It’s sad. It’s amazing open source exists as successfully as it does in spite of that, though I suspect in many cases it’s a byproduct of selfish corporate self-interest in hiring developers.

Software may just be (or seem) worse due to the anonymity. People are way more willing to be jerks in a text box or to an email address than on the phone or in person.

can confirm that this is true in a fractal fashion, in every vertical

That tracks with my experiences in life. It's why you see constant streams of fight videos coming from fast food places and not Ruth's Chris. Or Walmart, and less so Target or Pier One.

It's also why I quit listing things for free on Craigslist or FB. The absolute dregs of society come out to play. They'll demand you bring it to them, or that you hold it til they're ready, etc. And if someone else got it first, expect to receive a slew of hate messages. Not worth any of the hassle anymore.

I think the simple truth of it is that the value of software just doesn't translate to a lot of people's day to day. People will spend tons of money more than willingly for access to streaming libraries full of inane, samey bullshit. People will spend $70 to access the latest AAA game, people will spend thousands on well-tuned PC's, people will spend tens of thousands on cars, hundreds of thousands on homes, with varying degrees of objection to their prices but ultimately, they will swipe their cards, and that's what matters.

And all of those things are different for software. Between freemium garbage that hauls you in only to present a subscription charge to access basic functions of the program, to software utterly saturated with shitty ads, to, frankly, open source projects prepared to publish themselves accessible for free use by all, we have utterly cratered the perceived value of software. And while the last group in that list is certainly head shoulders and cock above the others with regard to ethics, it doesn't change the fact that open source software is loved precisely because it's free. People LOVE it for that, because they get access to software they don't need to pay for, the lions share of those aforementioned people having utterly no clue what goes into making it. Or, worse still, know exactly what it takes and are happy to shove that workload onto someone they don't know, with a side order of verbal abuse when bad things happen.

I don't know how to fix this. If all the open source software went closed source tomorrow, it would be unmitigated chaos. But at the same time, how many of the Fortune 500 right now are utterly dependent on it? How many people's fortunes are maintained on the back of free software they could never themselves make, built by unpaid and abused volunteers? I love the principles of open source software, but I have never in my life written one sodding line of code without a paycheck coming and I intend to keep it that way, not because I don't think the world wouldn't be better if I did, but because none of the people I'd want to benefit would. I think our industry would be better if more people kept to that philosophy.

A downvoted but an interesting comment. Years ago I shared this same opinion. When I first learned about Stallman's take on how software should be free, I thought the guy was insane.

But with time, it's now obvious he was right about a lot of things. Very few things in the history of humanity made as much impact as OSS and all the things it has inspired and enabled: Linux, gcc, Postges, and so on. Think about how many things are derived from Linux alone, e.g. Android. Zuck hacked on early Facebook in php and MySQL, it's his choice not mine, but still, the impact is obvious. Before people start piling up on me and downvoting, think about the things that Facebook open sourced like React, PyTorch, LLaMA, and so on. How can this be bad?

LLaMA isn't open source. it's model available (MA), which is very generous of Mr. Zuckerberg, but it's not Open Source.

bad or good, we're forced to live in two worlds. a digital realm, where things can be copied infinitely for free, and a physical realm, where there's rent and food to pay for. so it's bad, because we haven't established a basic level of existence for everybody so people need to get whatever they can get out of it to pay their bills.

> But with time, it's now obvious he was right about a lot of things.

I've gone through the same evolution. Stallman was fundamentally right about the notion of rights for users--to look at, to understand, to change, and to redistribute software. As more of the world is driven by software I think those rights are merging with other fundamental human rights like the right to free speech. They make the world a better place.

Open Source is great, but there should be a clear delimitation between users and maintainers. Like you want to contribute, make sure that you’ve read the guide and present your patch as it’s stated. You want to file a bug, fill this form. You have an idea, go on this board and see if something similar has not been posted already. If yes, add your vote. You can’t build a project with the whole world micromanaging you.

When the marginal cost of creating another copy is essentially $0, the market price for the product tends towards zero. People are then willing to pay more for the convenience of having the product readily available than for the product itself.

People pay for streaming services and buy stuff from app stores, because it's convenient. But if the service is not convenient enough, the catalog is too narrow, or the price is too high, piracy and free alternatives start looking more attractive.

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