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This costs $20/month, what happens when someone releases an open source version that essentially does the same thing but for free?
by racket 6y ago
This costs $20/month, what happens when someone releases an open source version that essentially does the same thing but for free?
- eyelidlessness 6y agoSome people will use the open source tool and other people will gladly pay money to have someone else manage it for them. Pretty much the same as any service that provides a (real or perceived) value and has open source alternatives.
- dubcanada 6y agoWhat a rude comment. You can literally ask this on every single Show HN thread.
- hombre_fatal 6y agoNothing, because people don't flock to self-hosted open source just because it exists. Else Slack/Discord would be dead. Effectively nobody uses their open source competitors because the experience is terrible rather than a service that takes it out of your hands in a nice package.
- snowwrestler 6y agoOpen source tools already exist. Wget can and is used to build out static copies of websites. It's also possible to get most of the benefit by using a reverse proxy cache with super long TTLs and a targeted purging strategy to handle content updates. If you're tempted to point out that those approaches are a pain to use and don't work perfectly, well a) welcome to a lot of open source, and b) that's why commercial ventures can still succeed.
- chiefalchemist 6y agoFree? Let's be clear. There is no such thing. Ever. Everything has a cost. You can spend money. Or you can spend time. But either way, you will spend. For example, Product X is $20 per month. To do the same yourself is 60 to 90 minutes per month. It's fair that you might not mind the time. You want to learn something new. But the idea that you're saving $20 per month is the wrong lens.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]