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Thibault Duplessis is actually an ex co-worker of mine, and this guy is truly impressive. Not only he is a very talented developer, he really sticks to his bel

Thibault Duplessis is actually an ex co-worker of mine, and this guy is truly impressive. Not only he is a very talented developer, he really sticks to his beliefs and made what Lichess is today. He used to take up a job for a year or so, save money, and travel the world for a year or so until money runs out. Then he would come back to France and take up a new job. All working on Lichess during his free time. For a few years now he has enough donation to pay himself enough money for his expenses, while he could have been a startup millionaire if he had decided to take a different path. But he proved that you can have a successful non-profit, free of charge, free from ads service. Not just source code, but an actual service hosted with millions of users. We need more people like Thibault.

kome 6y ago
I love absolutely everything about this. Thank you for sharing his story. Free/Libre software has been built thanks to principled people like him. It's truly a collective effort. And corporations started to slowly eroding it from within.
phoinix 6y ago
He may as well be a millionaire in the future. By having a platform that people use you do get a minimal amount of bug fixing and stability of the platform. Lichess is a platform for companies to use it for their purposes with some tweaks here and there it can be an education platform, a platform for engineers to practice the internals of machines and many more possibilities. Joomla is open source and their devs make so much money selling plugins and widgets. Who is the best man for the job to tweak the platform than the developers who made the open source core of it? I use lichess everyday for years, the stability of the platform is absolutely top notch. An absolute minimal amount of bugs, no glitches in the website, every page i click on, loads instantaneously. The commercial website Chess24 and closed source, doesn't have "ultrabullet' games, very quick games of 15 seconds, because their platform cannot support it. lol
- aaronax 6y ago
  I think the "plugins and widgets" path to making money easily ends up being detrimental to the original free thing. Instead of spending time just improving the thing, one ends up carefully planning out what can acceptably be broken out separately, how to make the thing extensible, billing, advertising, funneling...just all kinds of garbage. Eventually you end up with a load of staff who are dependent on the thing for their livelihoods, and that influences decision-making. Next up is selling to a company with big resources "to empower us to complete the original vision" and soon after a new scrappy upstart releases their free alternative, to start the cycle again.
  - phoinix 6y ago
    Very true, the vision of the system may alter a little bit, if in the future there are commercial sponsors. Every new version will have to be more conservative, so as not to break compatibility, development will slow down, more bureuocracy etc. I think the future of education is portraying it as a game, history as a game, engineering as game etc and solving puzzles along the way. Lichess as a platform may be useful in that regard, because a game to be enjoyable doesn't need to have all the fancy 3d graphics.
- bluedino 6y ago
  Joomla. Have not heard that name in a very long time.
ArtWomb 6y ago
I can think of no better compliment: Lichess is the site, the eternal game of chess deserves.
CyberRabbi 6y ago
Do you know how many children he has? That would be the easiest way of getting more people like him.
- SamPatt 6y ago
  I understand your point, but children are not guaranteed to be like their parents, and many gifted people are actually poor parents.
  - CyberRabbi 6y ago
    In general children are more likely to be like their parents than non-children. That’s the rule, of course there are exceptions.
beebmam 6y ago
A way to have more people like Thibault is to make it so the cost of living is extremely cheap, if not totally guaranteed. A society creates its people.
- aabbcc1241 5y ago
  If you develop for a niche you care about, even not for profit, it shouldn't be hard to cover the bill (along with other day job). I'm doing so but in small scale so far.
- medium_burrito 6y ago
  Yeah, a Portland or Berlin where one can retire young with low cost of living and do cool stuff...
  - reedjosh 6y ago
    /s ?
    - mey 6y ago
      As someone living in Portland metro right now, either it's /s or misinformed. Portland hasn't been cheap since maybe 2010, maybe earlier depending on your definition. It may be cheaper than San Francisco, but certainly not cheap.
      - reedjosh 6y ago
        Same.
      - Gaelan 6y ago
        I read the comment as "a city like Portland, but…"
- hellbannedguy 6y ago
  I do agree, but most people want a lot of money. They might say they just want some protein in their noodles, but deep down they are a Zuck. It seems like every financially successful developer out there came from a middle/upper class enviornment. Once they smell money, it's always more, more, and more. If the get big enough they blame it on their shareholders? Guys like Thibault are a different breed. They are rare. I have a feeling his payoff will be huge in the future, and it will be a combination of respect, and a fulfilled guilt free life. I don't feel like arguing. Their must be few Horatio Algers out there banging away, and just want a comfortable life. It just seems like most people that's never ever enough once they get the whiff of financial opportunity. I truly believe Zuckerburg could have had a legitimate shot at running for president if it wasn't for greed. (He pondered running a few years ago with calculated photo op trips to the midwest.)
fersho311 6y ago
What an inspiration! I’m doing more or less the same with c0d3.com Been working on the learning community for about 5 years now. I’ve saved up enough for a year, will be quitting In 2 weeks to go back to teaching and improving the experience and teach more students about good engineering practices.
huevosabio 6y ago
Lichess is _impressive_ in itself. I was blown away when I found it was FOSS. Kudos to Thibault.
andrepd 6y ago
> We need more people like Thibault. What we need is a system that incenctivises people like Thibault, rather than incentivise people to develop nastier ways to make people click on ads :)
- gkya 6y ago
  Enable, not incentivise. Incentives are there, curiosity, community, gratification, etc. What people lack is the financial security to do nice things untainted with commercial interest, even in modern countries with proper welfare.
1337shadow 6y ago
Impressive to see a French spending his own money between jobs, instead of using the advantageous unemployment salary in France!

kome 6y ago

I love absolutely everything about this. Thank you for sharing his story. Free/Libre software has been built thanks to principled people like him. It's truly a collective effort. And corporations started to slowly eroding it from within.

phoinix 6y ago

He may as well be a millionaire in the future. By having a platform that people use you do get a minimal amount of bug fixing and stability of the platform. Lichess is a platform for companies to use it for their purposes with some tweaks here and there it can be an education platform, a platform for engineers to practice the internals of machines and many more possibilities. Joomla is open source and their devs make so much money selling plugins and widgets. Who is the best man for the job to tweak the platform than the developers who made the open source core of it? I use lichess everyday for years, the stability of the platform is absolutely top notch. An absolute minimal amount of bugs, no glitches in the website, every page i click on, loads instantaneously. The commercial website Chess24 and closed source, doesn't have "ultrabullet' games, very quick games of 15 seconds, because their platform cannot support it. lol

aaronax 6y ago
I think the "plugins and widgets" path to making money easily ends up being detrimental to the original free thing. Instead of spending time just improving the thing, one ends up carefully planning out what can acceptably be broken out separately, how to make the thing extensible, billing, advertising, funneling...just all kinds of garbage. Eventually you end up with a load of staff who are dependent on the thing for their livelihoods, and that influences decision-making. Next up is selling to a company with big resources "to empower us to complete the original vision" and soon after a new scrappy upstart releases their free alternative, to start the cycle again.
- phoinix 6y ago
  Very true, the vision of the system may alter a little bit, if in the future there are commercial sponsors. Every new version will have to be more conservative, so as not to break compatibility, development will slow down, more bureuocracy etc. I think the future of education is portraying it as a game, history as a game, engineering as game etc and solving puzzles along the way. Lichess as a platform may be useful in that regard, because a game to be enjoyable doesn't need to have all the fancy 3d graphics.
bluedino 6y ago
Joomla. Have not heard that name in a very long time.

ArtWomb 6y ago

I can think of no better compliment: Lichess is the site, the eternal game of chess deserves.

CyberRabbi 6y ago

Do you know how many children he has? That would be the easiest way of getting more people like him.

SamPatt 6y ago
I understand your point, but children are not guaranteed to be like their parents, and many gifted people are actually poor parents.
- CyberRabbi 6y ago
  In general children are more likely to be like their parents than non-children. That’s the rule, of course there are exceptions.

beebmam 6y ago

A way to have more people like Thibault is to make it so the cost of living is extremely cheap, if not totally guaranteed. A society creates its people.

aabbcc1241 5y ago
If you develop for a niche you care about, even not for profit, it shouldn't be hard to cover the bill (along with other day job). I'm doing so but in small scale so far.
medium_burrito 6y ago
Yeah, a Portland or Berlin where one can retire young with low cost of living and do cool stuff...
- reedjosh 6y ago
  /s ?
  - mey 6y ago
    As someone living in Portland metro right now, either it's /s or misinformed. Portland hasn't been cheap since maybe 2010, maybe earlier depending on your definition. It may be cheaper than San Francisco, but certainly not cheap.
    - reedjosh 6y ago
      Same.
    - Gaelan 6y ago
      I read the comment as "a city like Portland, but…"
hellbannedguy 6y ago
I do agree, but most people want a lot of money. They might say they just want some protein in their noodles, but deep down they are a Zuck. It seems like every financially successful developer out there came from a middle/upper class enviornment. Once they smell money, it's always more, more, and more. If the get big enough they blame it on their shareholders? Guys like Thibault are a different breed. They are rare. I have a feeling his payoff will be huge in the future, and it will be a combination of respect, and a fulfilled guilt free life. I don't feel like arguing. Their must be few Horatio Algers out there banging away, and just want a comfortable life. It just seems like most people that's never ever enough once they get the whiff of financial opportunity. I truly believe Zuckerburg could have had a legitimate shot at running for president if it wasn't for greed. (He pondered running a few years ago with calculated photo op trips to the midwest.)

fersho311 6y ago

What an inspiration! I’m doing more or less the same with c0d3.com Been working on the learning community for about 5 years now. I’ve saved up enough for a year, will be quitting In 2 weeks to go back to teaching and improving the experience and teach more students about good engineering practices.

huevosabio 6y ago

Lichess is _impressive_ in itself. I was blown away when I found it was FOSS. Kudos to Thibault.

andrepd 6y ago

> We need more people like Thibault. What we need is a system that incenctivises people like Thibault, rather than incentivise people to develop nastier ways to make people click on ads :)

gkya 6y ago
Enable, not incentivise. Incentives are there, curiosity, community, gratification, etc. What people lack is the financial security to do nice things untainted with commercial interest, even in modern countries with proper welfare.

1337shadow 6y ago

Impressive to see a French spending his own money between jobs, instead of using the advantageous unemployment salary in France!