Requesting Funding for 90s.dev | Hacker News Reader

Requesting Funding for 90s.dev

90s.dev

86 points90s_dev49 comments

Walked away from the computer with this page on the screen, came back to find a bunch of colorful bubbles slowly floating over the page. Pressing the touchpad cleared them. It's like an old school screensaver - very nice touch!

Thanks, that's actually my screensaver project Bubbles[1] which I created to mimic as much as possible the Windows 95 bubbles screensaver. It's a one-line include for any website, which is why I put it in this one. Maybe it'll catch on!

[1] https://github.com/sdegutis/bubbles/

I get the bubbles page too after a minute or so, but the main page is just white with two black lines on it.

When I move my mouse around it, I get a click pointer and can see the links show up in the status area, but nothing is displayed. on latest version of Vivaldi

actually the content is there, it's just showing as white on white - when I select with the mouse I can see things - but my guess is that its still not displaying correctly

That's very odd. Not sure what os/browser you're using, but I'm using standard HTMLCanvas stuff to draw them. Could you file an issue in the repo with that info? Thanks!

You could also look into some sort of crowdfunding or kickstarter? Then you can reward backers with special perks or something. Good luck with the raising!

Short version: I want to work on 90s.dev, but have no time to. I could do it for $25/hour, using GitHub Sponsors as a way for everyone to chip in a little towards its development. Just an idea.

The vision of 90s.dev is to be a retro os environment entirely in the web, that's suitable for making all the apps you'd need to make a game, from code editors to sprite editors to animation tools to debuggers. And it's decentralized too, so the apps don't have to be built in, you can import them from anywhere on the web, as long as the app speaks the 90s.dev API. This would recreate a retro development environment similar to what many of us grew up with in the 90s.

Please take this as some unsolicited friendly advice, but I don't think you'll be able to live off this project with that funding model. GitHub sponsors is more like a tip jar than a paycheck.

This project is rather niche and your description of it is somewhat confusing. Maybe you could use the open source framework you've created to produce a paid game or app that would be easier to monetize.

Oh sorry, I kind of skipped over introducing what the project is, mainly because when I wrote this, the intended audience was the people who showed support on the previous Show HN thread. But here's a better explanation of the project's purpose, the one I posted via Show HN two months ago: https://90s.dev/blog/finally-releasing-90s-dev.html

I do agree that this is a new way of using GitHub Sponsors. And I do agree that it might entirely not work out the way I'm thinking. But to my knowledge, this way of using GH Sponsors hasn't been tried before, so it's worth at least trying it once I think. Besides, there was significant interest in this project, which is what made me think of trying this at all, otherwise I would not have. Thanks for the feedback.

You could also try BuyMeACoffee and LiberaPay, or even Patreon, or all of them.

I suppose this is the same thing, just, using GitHub Sponsors, no? Are there significant differences?

I have not used GitHub Sponsors so I cannot tell, but GitHub Sponsors may be more accessible to developers. So you should probably use whichever is more accessible to others, less friction = better. That said, having more options is probably better either way, I assume.

> the intended audience was the people who showed support on the previous Show HN thread

Your previous Show HN had 113 comments. That's a nice accomplishment but even if 100% of those commenters paid $25/month you aren't going to get to the equivalent of $25/hour.

> there was significant interest in this project

Are you referring to the Show HN? Was there significant interest in paying?

I don't mind not getting full time payment. That's not the goal of this. The goal is to try an experimental method of funding open source projects, something we have all been thinking about for a while. This is just one variation. If it doesn't pan out to full time employment, then fine, that's expected. I'd be surprised if it did.

[Edit to clarify] I'm not trying to pressure or guilt anyone into donating for personal reasons. My only goal in this post is to propose a way to experiment with open source funding. Other details are just me answering unrelated questions.

I got a 404. IS the website still online?

Great, you made it to the front page this time. Lol.

Edit: this isn't a negative comment. I made the comment because I noticed he complained about being down voted a lot previously.

And it's falling back off. Expected. Thanks anyway everyone for trying. Thanks mods for letting it try.

Not sure why that thread below got flagged. It's pretty relevant to the topic

I do not know the personal life of most people whose work I use or like though. I do not think I would stop using them just because they did something I find morally repulsive. If ReiserFS was any good than the alternatives, I would use it. I understand the people who wouldn't. Granted, it is related to funding him, but eh.

A quick question: How well do you know the people behind your favorite projects?

I think this counts as more of a 'public life' situation.

If it turns out Linus did something terrible in the past, I wonder how many people would stop using Linux based on that alone. We are not the same. To some people it matters a great deal, to others it does not matter at all, and there are some people somewhere in the middle I suppose. To me it is more about pragmatism. I may have an opinion on the developer as a person, but that would not stop me from using the project. For example I do not like the author of Odin much, but I do like the programming language. When it comes to contributing to the project, however, that he (author of Odin) reviews, I am not so eager because I have seen him being somewhat condescending before, which I think is more relevant than his personal life.

That said, when it comes to funding, it is not so clear cut to me. I actually do not have an answer. Transparency?

These projects are not important though. So why worry about the debate?

You may have seen it already but here's an explanation of the moderation thinking on the topic (or rather, not on the topic but on this particular post): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44713731. Like everything else, it's a tradeoff. Other people would prioritize it the other way around and I respect that. In terms of the principles of this site I think it's the best move on this occasion, though not on every occasion.

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