4 ms·
I meant to say that lichess.org is a bit of an outlier for a great service based on FOSS principles and a donation model. There are many chessplayers who think
by sireat 4y ago
I meant to say that lichess.org is a bit of an outlier for a great service based on FOSS principles and a donation model.
There are many chessplayers who think lichess > chess because it is absolutely free. That is not a sufficient condition for greatness. Having a paid model is not a horrible thing.
It is not given that a nice FOSS project is sustainable. There are plenty of free projects which went nowhere.
Only a handful FOSS projects can support themselves (vue, lichess and very few others).
Even worse, there are many formerly great FOSS projects half-abandonded when the original creator decided to get a "real job". That is what worries me with lichess - the bus factor of one.
Yes I have lichess repo on my computer but that is not sufficient.
As I have grown older I've come to appreciate the value of paying for things well made.
- eloisant 4y agoI guess we'll only know for sure when Thibault loses interest in lichess or gets hit by a bus, but I think lichess could continue without him. There are only people working with him, he's not alone in the project. And other people have access to the servers so even if he dies suddenly without having time to do a hand-off the project could still continue.
- synu 4y agoLichess has >300 contributors. Probably not all of them could take over the project, but probably some could if needed. It also accepts donations, so isn't an unpaid model (it's just designed to cover costs, not generate profits). - https://github.com/lichess-org/lila https://github.com/lichess-org/lila - https://lichess.org/patron https://lichess.org/patron