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In other words, don't do what Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, or Yahoo did. I appreciate the sentiment (and it's what I do with my own hilariously
by ken 7y ago
In other words, don't do what Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, or Yahoo did.
I appreciate the sentiment (and it's what I do with my own hilariously unsuccessful software), but you can't walk into a room full of data-driven aspiring entrepreneurs and tell them to do exactly what the market has shown it doesn't want, even though that would be better for all of us.
- wvenable 7y agoNone of these companies make money from Free Software. They might use Free Software but the majority of those companies run proprietary software as a service. Data-driven aspiring entrepreneurs would notice that companies attempting to create and sell distributed free software haven't historically done so well. Putting ads in free software doesn't make it analogous to the business of Google and Facebook.
- dredmorbius 7y agoBuilding a particular thing using a set of tools is not the same as infecting a set of tools with a thing. More to the point: by injecting advertising directly into packages distributed through a package repository and/or a specific toolset / toolchain / language, the parties injecting the advertising are exploiting and mining the accrued trust of that project, toolchain, and/or language, for personal gain. It's a tragedy-of-the-commons effect: socialised costs (building of the larger toolchain), privatised benefits (ads revenue). The long-term consequence will be a very-well-deserved shunning of the toolchain by others. A cost largely born by the vast majority not acting antisocially.