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If I were to charge money, the side project would become a business, and running a business takes a lot of work. Why would I bother? I don't need or want a seco
by marssaxman 5y ago
If I were to charge money, the side project would become a business, and running a business takes a lot of work. Why would I bother? I don't need or want a second job.
If I am going to write code in my free time, for the sake of something I feel personally motivated to create, I would rather share the results back to the world under an open-source license.
- flashgordon 5y agoSo true. My job pays me a lot of (ish) money. But my side projects give me fulfillment and challenges that my real job never could. Only "compensation" I'd love for my Side gig is adoption, appreciation and the good feeling that it is directly solving a personal itch but for others too!
- sharkweek 5y agoI can’t lay claim to having made anything free that has taken the world by storm, but if I had I’d feel way more responsible to responding to requests (complaints) if I started charging for it. When it’s free, easier to ignore those things.
- jmull 5y agoI agree with this. I put a little custom app I wrote for my wife on the App Store, mainly as a learning experience. And I decided to charge a buck to keep the riff-raff away. But that $1 makes me feel a real obligation to my users.. I've put in maybe 6 hours of work over ~5 years updating and supporting when a new OS update breaks something, all for an app that has generated about maybe a bit less than $100 of revenue. I don't exactly mind. This is the learning experience I wanted. (I have other, more successful apps on the store, but as the programmer of a small team who didn't deal with the App Store beyond getting builds uploaded.)