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Comment by skeezyboy | Hacker News Reader

Author needs money from you but lives in London. Maybe he should move somewhere cheaper

Whoa, that is an enormously terrible take. Consider that an average programmer over the lifetime of their career can produce the equivalent of 4-10 "War and Peace" volumes - just in pure estimation of numbers of words in their code. I'm not even speculating about the profound impact some software makes for the betterment of the entire human race.

And many share their hard work with the world for absolutely nothing in return. Imagine if someone said: "Why should Tolstoy be entitled to get paid for writing 'War and Peace'? After all, he's an aristocrat, a Count..."

Well, Tolstoy did later in his life reject copyright on many works, believing literature should be free, and his wealth allowed him to write "for fun, not profit," but honestly, wouldn't you feel honored to "buy the guy a coffee" back in the day - given that you really appreciated his work? Or you'd immediately put him in the same position as Onlyfans influencers if the epilogue of his book ended with: "You can send your support to ..."

he wants patronage. id pay for a product

No, you wouldn't. If there was a FOSS product with a donation tier, I bet you'd just use it without ever donating. Which is fine. You're just bitter for whatever reason and that's just wrong. Open-source developers are one of the most cherished layer of our society and any effort of participating in that is commendable. I doubt that if the OP was a resident of Sudan you'd do anything to help them, the best case, you would've just said nothing. I'm not telling you to donate or not, it's absolutely your own choice, not anyone else's, but please, don't be a jerk. Negative comments like these are a significant factor why developers decide not to open-source their ideas.

> don't be a jerk. it is you who is the jerk

> Author needs money from you but lives in London. Maybe he should move somewhere cheaper

Wow. Is this because I wrote the following on my blog?

"Find video-trimmer-mode useful? Want me to publish to MELPA? Enjoying this blog or my projects? I am an indie dev. Help make my work sustainable by sponsoring.

Need a blog? I can help with that. Maybe buy my macOS/iOS apps too ;)"

Living in London isn't as much of a luxury as living on a personal yacht, but it is something of a luxury for a dev who has choices. I could see weighing it in my sponsorship decisions. As a dev living in a very low density, inexpensive rural area I have more resources for my side projects than otherwise.

If I were buying rather than donating, it wouldn't factor in at all.

> I could see weighing it in my sponsorship decisions.

I build software. If I build useful things, there's a demand.

TIL where I live is now relevant to some.

youre holding out a digital beggars cup

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