8 ms·

Cost breakdown here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Si3PMUJGR9KrpE5lngSkHLJKJkb0ZuI4/preview https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Si3PMUJGR9KrpE5ln

by laydn 5y ago

Cost breakdown here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Si3PMUJGR9KrpE5lngSkHLJKJkb0ZuI4/preview https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Si3PMUJGR9KrpE5lngSk... I hope OVH would donate some compute/machines to lichess. It would help lichess a lot financially. It would be good publicity for OVH and I think it would be a drop in the ocean on their balance sheet.

nly 5y ago
Holy hell that's an expensive project. Do donations cover all this, or are the operators independently wealthy and generous?
- YetAnotherNick 5y ago
  That's a cheap project. I have seen a single developer's salary to be more than that. Considering that around a billion games were played last year in lichess.
  - ishiz 5y ago
    What I find interesting is the part at the bottom that shows how much a donation helps: a $5 donation is enough to cover the company's budget for 6 minutes. This sounds really good for a few reasons: 1) since I play Lichess for several hours a month, I feel that I'm really getting my money's worth; 2) Lichess only needs a few thousand people to contribute $5/mo to stay net positive and I feel like it's easier to convince a few thousand people in a supportive community to part ways with $5 than it is for other companies to get a million people to donate $1; 3) I remember Reddit used to show on your profile how many server minutes your Gold purchase was worth and it would display something like 200 minutes for every $5 purchase, but this is only a single server out of hundreds and doesn't account for any other expenses, so Lichess is unsurprisingly very cheap to operate in comparison.
  - sillysaurusx 5y ago
    Uh, $55k a year is not cheap! What world... Ok, it's late, I'll hold back the rest of my words. :) I think you were saying it's cheap relative to the impact it has. I agree. But "holy hell that's expensive" is an entirely accurate reaction for someone who wants to fund it out of pocket. (Gwern covers our TPU/ML infrastructure costs for around $350/mo, and I wince that I wasn't able to optimize it cheaper.)
    - jpeter 5y ago
      55k is just the cost of the server. The total cost is 400k
      - sillysaurusx 5y ago
        Holy guacamole, I didn't scroll down far enough. Thank you for pointing this out. "French taxes" is $53k, which is nearly equal to their server fees. Wow. Props to them for however they manage to get $400k/yr for a free project with no business model, and no intended business model. (I'm serious; it's a wonderful thing for the world, and a tremendous example of what people can achieve without having a monetary focus.)
tdubhro1 5y ago
Interesting that a non profit pays 55k in French taxes
- ironicsonic 5y ago
  Most likely taxes on wage for the main developer salary. The tax wedge in France is slightly under 50%, so that checks out.
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    It's progressive and only gets to 45% once you reach €155K so that doesn't sound quite right.
    - paduc 5y ago
      I believe he's talking about social contributions (health, retirement, unemployment), that the employer pays, and not the taxes on revenue (paid by the employee).
matsemann 5y ago
I feel like the developer/founder should have a higher salary. $58k a year for running a site with millions of games per day.. deserves more. Is it because they don't get enough donations? Or saving the extra money for growth/buffer? (edit: originally posted this as a top level comment but felt it fit better here) Edit2: just checked. I've spent 11 whole days playing chess there (and not sure if that only counts games and not tactics etc). Made my first donation now.
- de6u99er 5y ago
  I recall an AMA on Reddit, where the founder said he is perfectly fune with his salary as long as LiChess stays free and he can continue doing what he loves.
  - ZephyrBlu 5y ago
    I think the founder should have "fuck you" money, not just a reasonable salary.
    - hobofan 5y ago
      Well it seems like the founder doesn't want more money. Not everyone needs or wants "fuck you" money, and with that kind of salary you can afford a decent life in (most of) France.
      - ZephyrBlu 5y ago
        This is assuming that this stream of income doesn't ever dry up. I personally think that the founder should have enough money to never worry about money, or at least have a big buffer. If at some point in the future for whatever reason Lichess gets less donations, he could be screwed. On the other hand if he had a bit of a warchest he either has runway to increase revenue or to find another source of income.
        indigochill 5y ago
nly 5y ago
Those secret costs seem extreme for something that's only serving a few millions websockets a day
nezirus 5y ago
I don't have enough details about the exact setup, but the server cost looks excessive* to me. Especially those Xeon Gold and Silver machines (are they using managed hosting or what). Almost all of them are in single OVH data center too, that's not very robust. * Compared to a certain German hosting provider, where I can get AMD EPYC 7502P with 128GB RAM for about 100EUR. Again don't know the arrangement, but with some effort they could add more servers, lower the cost and add Geo-resiliency.
- hutrdvnj 5y ago
  "to a certain German hosting provider" Hetzner
  - nezirus 5y ago
    Yeah, don't want to provide free advertising (they don't need it), but they should be as reliable as OVH for hosting servers in Europe.
    - yourad_io 5y ago
      Until you get DDOSed and then they (Hetzner) null-route your server. They claim not to: https://twitter.com/hetzner_online/status/968085046073622528?lang=en https://twitter.com/hetzner_online/status/968085046073622528... I do wonder if that is still the case. edit: Maybe not: https://community.centminmod.com/threads/any-personal-feedback-about-hetzner-ddos-protection.19970/ https://community.centminmod.com/threads/any-personal-feedba...
      - hutrdvnj 5y ago
        That is quite normal behavior for most hosters and it depends on the strength of DDOS. If you have to deal with DDOS frequently then you need a loadbalancer in between your service and your clients, that offers DDOS protection.
oli5679 5y ago
It's interesting that he spends so little on servers. 1 billion chess games per year, often with >20k concurrent users and and some very heavy-duty engine analysis occurring for some proportion of these games and they only spends $56k. I have seen startups with only hundreds of customers spend 10x this on AWS by copying the fancy tools used by tech giants. It is also interesting how little the creator pays himself ($56k) and how much he spends on data protection ($40k), taxes ($52k) and various administration tasks. I wonder if his time is as heavily skewed towards administration as his expenditure. I would also like to meet this guy, buy him a beer/coffee and thank him for the value he has created:).
- ponytech 5y ago
  > I would also like to meet this guy, buy him a beer/coffee and thank him for the value he has created:). I had the chance to met him a few years back during a conference in France[1]. He is very friendly indeed. 1: https://mixitconf.org/en/2015/thibault-duplessis-lichess-org--open-source-success-story https://mixitconf.org/en/2015/thibault-duplessis-lichess-org...
  - ponytech 5y ago
    There's a replay of this talk (from 2015) here: https://www.infoq.com/fr/presentations/lichessorg-open-source-success-story/ https://www.infoq.com/fr/presentations/lichessorg-open-sourc... Reminds me memories :)
- nly 5y ago
  I had the opposite reaction. $1000/mo on a few frontend servers for only 20K concurrent users seems excessive. I've seen simple $40/mo droplets handle 50,000 concurrent websocket connections with minimal latency without breaking a sweat. $2000/mo on databases is also nuts, unless you're storing hundreds of terabytes at high redundancy levels.
  - Eikon 5y ago
    > $2000/mo on databases is also nuts, unless you're storing hundreds of terabytes at high redundancy levels. What? 300TB at 0,20e /GB which would actually be quite cheap for fast storage at high redundancy would cost 60 000e / month.

by laydn 5y ago

nly 5y ago

Holy hell that's an expensive project. Do donations cover all this, or are the operators independently wealthy and generous?

YetAnotherNick 5y ago
That's a cheap project. I have seen a single developer's salary to be more than that. Considering that around a billion games were played last year in lichess.
- ishiz 5y ago
  What I find interesting is the part at the bottom that shows how much a donation helps: a $5 donation is enough to cover the company's budget for 6 minutes. This sounds really good for a few reasons: 1) since I play Lichess for several hours a month, I feel that I'm really getting my money's worth; 2) Lichess only needs a few thousand people to contribute $5/mo to stay net positive and I feel like it's easier to convince a few thousand people in a supportive community to part ways with $5 than it is for other companies to get a million people to donate $1; 3) I remember Reddit used to show on your profile how many server minutes your Gold purchase was worth and it would display something like 200 minutes for every $5 purchase, but this is only a single server out of hundreds and doesn't account for any other expenses, so Lichess is unsurprisingly very cheap to operate in comparison.
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  Uh, $55k a year is not cheap! What world... Ok, it's late, I'll hold back the rest of my words. :) I think you were saying it's cheap relative to the impact it has. I agree. But "holy hell that's expensive" is an entirely accurate reaction for someone who wants to fund it out of pocket. (Gwern covers our TPU/ML infrastructure costs for around $350/mo, and I wince that I wasn't able to optimize it cheaper.)
  - jpeter 5y ago
    55k is just the cost of the server. The total cost is 400k
    - sillysaurusx 5y ago
      Holy guacamole, I didn't scroll down far enough. Thank you for pointing this out. "French taxes" is $53k, which is nearly equal to their server fees. Wow. Props to them for however they manage to get $400k/yr for a free project with no business model, and no intended business model. (I'm serious; it's a wonderful thing for the world, and a tremendous example of what people can achieve without having a monetary focus.)

tdubhro1 5y ago

Interesting that a non profit pays 55k in French taxes

ironicsonic 5y ago
Most likely taxes on wage for the main developer salary. The tax wedge in France is slightly under 50%, so that checks out.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  It's progressive and only gets to 45% once you reach €155K so that doesn't sound quite right.
  - paduc 5y ago
    I believe he's talking about social contributions (health, retirement, unemployment), that the employer pays, and not the taxes on revenue (paid by the employee).

matsemann 5y ago

I feel like the developer/founder should have a higher salary. $58k a year for running a site with millions of games per day.. deserves more. Is it because they don't get enough donations? Or saving the extra money for growth/buffer? (edit: originally posted this as a top level comment but felt it fit better here) Edit2: just checked. I've spent 11 whole days playing chess there (and not sure if that only counts games and not tactics etc). Made my first donation now.

de6u99er 5y ago
I recall an AMA on Reddit, where the founder said he is perfectly fune with his salary as long as LiChess stays free and he can continue doing what he loves.
- ZephyrBlu 5y ago
  I think the founder should have "fuck you" money, not just a reasonable salary.
  - hobofan 5y ago
    Well it seems like the founder doesn't want more money. Not everyone needs or wants "fuck you" money, and with that kind of salary you can afford a decent life in (most of) France.
    - ZephyrBlu 5y ago
      This is assuming that this stream of income doesn't ever dry up. I personally think that the founder should have enough money to never worry about money, or at least have a big buffer. If at some point in the future for whatever reason Lichess gets less donations, he could be screwed. On the other hand if he had a bit of a warchest he either has runway to increase revenue or to find another source of income.
      - indigochill 5y ago

nly 5y ago

Those secret costs seem extreme for something that's only serving a few millions websockets a day

nezirus 5y ago

I don't have enough details about the exact setup, but the server cost looks excessive* to me. Especially those Xeon Gold and Silver machines (are they using managed hosting or what). Almost all of them are in single OVH data center too, that's not very robust. * Compared to a certain German hosting provider, where I can get AMD EPYC 7502P with 128GB RAM for about 100EUR. Again don't know the arrangement, but with some effort they could add more servers, lower the cost and add Geo-resiliency.

hutrdvnj 5y ago
"to a certain German hosting provider" Hetzner
- nezirus 5y ago
  Yeah, don't want to provide free advertising (they don't need it), but they should be as reliable as OVH for hosting servers in Europe.
  - yourad_io 5y ago
    Until you get DDOSed and then they (Hetzner) null-route your server. They claim not to: https://twitter.com/hetzner_online/status/968085046073622528?lang=en https://twitter.com/hetzner_online/status/968085046073622528... I do wonder if that is still the case. edit: Maybe not: https://community.centminmod.com/threads/any-personal-feedback-about-hetzner-ddos-protection.19970/ https://community.centminmod.com/threads/any-personal-feedba...
    - hutrdvnj 5y ago
      That is quite normal behavior for most hosters and it depends on the strength of DDOS. If you have to deal with DDOS frequently then you need a loadbalancer in between your service and your clients, that offers DDOS protection.

oli5679 5y ago

It's interesting that he spends so little on servers. 1 billion chess games per year, often with >20k concurrent users and and some very heavy-duty engine analysis occurring for some proportion of these games and they only spends $56k. I have seen startups with only hundreds of customers spend 10x this on AWS by copying the fancy tools used by tech giants. It is also interesting how little the creator pays himself ($56k) and how much he spends on data protection ($40k), taxes ($52k) and various administration tasks. I wonder if his time is as heavily skewed towards administration as his expenditure. I would also like to meet this guy, buy him a beer/coffee and thank him for the value he has created:).

ponytech 5y ago
> I would also like to meet this guy, buy him a beer/coffee and thank him for the value he has created:). I had the chance to met him a few years back during a conference in France[1]. He is very friendly indeed. 1: https://mixitconf.org/en/2015/thibault-duplessis-lichess-org--open-source-success-story https://mixitconf.org/en/2015/thibault-duplessis-lichess-org...
- ponytech 5y ago
  There's a replay of this talk (from 2015) here: https://www.infoq.com/fr/presentations/lichessorg-open-source-success-story/ https://www.infoq.com/fr/presentations/lichessorg-open-sourc... Reminds me memories :)
nly 5y ago
I had the opposite reaction. $1000/mo on a few frontend servers for only 20K concurrent users seems excessive. I've seen simple $40/mo droplets handle 50,000 concurrent websocket connections with minimal latency without breaking a sweat. $2000/mo on databases is also nuts, unless you're storing hundreds of terabytes at high redundancy levels.
- Eikon 5y ago
  > $2000/mo on databases is also nuts, unless you're storing hundreds of terabytes at high redundancy levels. What? 300TB at 0,20e /GB which would actually be quite cheap for fast storage at high redundancy would cost 60 000e / month.