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> As always, if you're not the customer, you're the product. All too often you can be the customer and still be the product. It's great if you genuinely aren't

> As always, if you're not the customer, you're the product. All too often you can be the customer and still be the product. It's great if you genuinely aren't selling out your paying users, but you're increasingly the outlier there > That's the problem with all of these free extensions: they have no clear business model. Not every extension needs a business model. Many exist just because someone was passionate enough about a problem to come up with a solution and they were happy to share what works for them with others. Not everything has to be about getting rich. Many of the best things aren't.

lapcat 3y ago
> Not every extension needs a business model. Many exist just because someone was passionate enough about a problem to come up with a solution and they were happy to share what works for them with others. Not everything has to be about getting rich. Many of the best things aren't. True, but just as money can run out, so can passion. And everyone needs to make a living somehow. Most of the big open source projects have corporate funding and engineers who are paid to work on them. I continue to be puzzled about how Raymond Hill, the developer of uBlock Origin, makes a living, and how he has time to continue to work on the extension. Does anyone know? Note that even Hill's passion wanes. "The uBlock project official repository was transferred to Chris Aljoudi by original developer Raymond Hill in April 2015, due to frustration of dealing with requests." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin?#uBlock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin?#uBlock This is how uBlock became uBlock Origin, and Hill's trust in Aljoudi turned out to be misplaced. Open source is no savior. More recently, Hill said this: "What would actually help is that people help to completely investigate existing issues instead of keep asking me to add yet more features. Turns out people willing to step in the code to investigate and pinpoint exactly where is an issue (or that there is no issue) is incredibly rare." https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/i240ds/comment/g0bh51n/ https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/i240ds/commen... Thus, I still think a business model is important, even crucial. Without sustainable funding, the future of any software project becomes highly questionable.

lapcat 3y ago

> Not every extension needs a business model. Many exist just because someone was passionate enough about a problem to come up with a solution and they were happy to share what works for them with others. Not everything has to be about getting rich. Many of the best things aren't. True, but just as money can run out, so can passion. And everyone needs to make a living somehow. Most of the big open source projects have corporate funding and engineers who are paid to work on them. I continue to be puzzled about how Raymond Hill, the developer of uBlock Origin, makes a living, and how he has time to continue to work on the extension. Does anyone know? Note that even Hill's passion wanes. "The uBlock project official repository was transferred to Chris Aljoudi by original developer Raymond Hill in April 2015, due to frustration of dealing with requests." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin?#uBlock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin?#uBlock This is how uBlock became uBlock Origin, and Hill's trust in Aljoudi turned out to be misplaced. Open source is no savior. More recently, Hill said this: "What would actually help is that people help to completely investigate existing issues instead of keep asking me to add yet more features. Turns out people willing to step in the code to investigate and pinpoint exactly where is an issue (or that there is no issue) is incredibly rare." https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/i240ds/comment/g0bh51n/ https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/i240ds/commen... Thus, I still think a business model is important, even crucial. Without sustainable funding, the future of any software project becomes highly questionable.