There's nothing wrong with monetizing content, but I think the main issue is that Andrew didn't manage expectations effectively. If Mixergy had started with a h

There's nothing wrong with monetizing content, but I think the main issue is that Andrew didn't manage expectations effectively. If Mixergy had started with a hint of a commercial angle, it would have telegraphed the change and softened the blow. Instead, many Mixergy fans (including me) thought that Mixergy was a feel-good project "giving back" to the entrepreneur community, and we felt blindsided by what seemed like a sudden shift in emphasis. That's not to say the balancing act is easy. I'm working on a Ruby on Rails tutorial project (http://www.railstutorial.org/ http://www.railstutorial.org/) that definitely has an altruistic component, and it has been a challenge to indicate that it's not a charity. For example, although I'm giving away the HTML version of the book, I've emphasized that I'll eventually be selling a screencast version of the tutorial. I'm also offering "Unlimited free downloads [of the PDF version] 'til the book is done", which creates the expectation that I may eventually charge for the PDF. Managing expectations is an art, and even highly capable people sometimes blow it. Imagine how much friendlier the reception to Arc would have been if pg had soft-launched it in '03 rather than writing essays about it for half a decade and calling it the "hundred-year language". It was pretty hard to live up to those expectations.