For the past few years I've increasingly started thinking that 'free' can be pathological. The problem is that it's a lie. Everything takes effort to produce.

For the past few years I've increasingly started thinking that 'free' can be pathological. The problem is that it's a lie. Everything takes effort to produce. Nothing is actually free. Sure you can give something away-- that's a gift. But it's not free. Sometimes it's okay if the person or entity releasing something for free is intentional about that: "I'm going to do this because I feel like it and I expect nothing (tangible) in return" or the corporate equivalent of "we are going to make this free because it's part of our strategy or because we have nothing to lose by doing so." Then you get one of two scenarios: (1) The original honest intent was to make X free but now it's getting so much attention that it's becoming demanding. Now the person or entity releasing X has a choice between a number of bad options: keep it free and continue to sink time/money into it, abandon it, change its status to non-free, or find some indirect way to monetize it. (2) "Free" was a lie from the get-go. It was just a growth hack, a gimmick. The intent was always to find some way to "flip the switch" and monetize. The difference between these two scenarios is the original intent, but the end result is often quite similar. Abandonment is always an option (at least with scenario #1), and that's how a lot of free things end up after the burnout sets in. But if abandonment isn't an option you're basically faced with the choice between making something non-free and indirectly monetizing it. Revoking free status is unpopular and will probably lose you a lot of users. The strong temptation, especially given the success of this model, is indirect monetization. That's where things get pathological. Indirect monetization means ads and surveillance, and on a bidirectional medium like the Internet ads basically mean surveillance. You're turning your users into a product and selling them out. Unfortunately we've raised a generation to believe that "all information should be free, man!" This is leading us directly down a terribly Orwellian path-- to make the free lie work, vendors have to treat the user as a product.