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Creator is hoping to raise at least €1k for basic living expense

205 points by genzer 3y ago

reacharavindh 3y ago
I made a one time contribution. I hope there are other folks who benefit from such self hosted software that will give him a financial hand.
- moepstar 3y ago
  Same - i dunno if i ever have a use for the project/software, but when he wrote that he doesn't want to "Jimmy Wales" people i just had to :D Also: sometimes, life is just brutal - admitting you actually do need help (and even moreso in such a public way) itself has to be rewarded and commended!
  - ilaksh 3y ago
    I have a different take. I think it's a warning to people that use the software: they can either chip in a little bit, or have no expectation whatsoever for there ever to be another release. I think that there is an ethical obligation here on the part of active users to donate at least $2 each, assuming that the developer isn't making up a story.
    - smabie 3y ago
      There's no ethical obligation to help someone who decided to upload code you can use to the internet.
      - Towaway69 3y ago
        Now that's brutal. Of course there isn't and you are quite right but there are such things as morals.
      - dimask 3y ago
        If one needs the code to be maintained, not supporting may mean that the code may stop being maintained, which may mean that one will stop being able to use it in the future. This may or may not be related to ethics, depending on what one calls or defines as ethics, but the reality is that free rides always carry a risk, even if there is no ethical obligation to pay for the ride. Of course, that depends on what value one gives to the code, and stuff like the cost of not being able to use it in the future due to lack of maintenance, or the cost of having to put in effort to maintain it oneself. But while there are no such ethical obligations tied to the use of some free software per se, imo there are ethics (or "ethics") tied to the interdepedencies and connections within such a social system in the sense of it being sustainable and able to self-perpetuate.
    - sneak 3y ago
      Free software is a gift. It does not create an obligation when one receives it.
      - Towaway69 3y ago
        Life is a gift that also comes with no obligations. Pity everyone takes it so seriously.
      - osmsucks 3y ago
        Free software is generally considered "free as in free speech". Doesn't always imply gratis, as people still need to pay their bills.
        sneak 3y ago
        It’s both, as a point of law. If it’s free as in speech, it is also necessarily free as in beer. That’s what the freedom to redistribute means.
      - Temporary_31337 3y ago
        You should read about psychology of gifts and how it helped the white man to conquer America. Native Americans were such honourable people that they felt every gift must be repaid and more.
    - carlosjobim 3y ago
      > ...assuming that the developer isn't making up a story. Even if the developer is a millionaire, it's proper to chip in a few bucks for free stuff that you use and enjoy. Sob story or no sob story. But honestly, the real solution is for people to stop with this open source nonsense and start charging for their work. There are thousands of potential customers for every boutique app or code solution. Nobody is entitled to free code, especially not the billion dollar companies who are the main beneficiaries of the hard work of open source programmers.
AYBABTME 3y ago
Here's a one time donation. The project looks interesting, I'll give it a spin next time I need something like that. If it's embeddable as a library that's even better!
MrEd 3y ago
> also turns out that CV with mainly software development is not all that useful for lot of things outside software dev :-/ No shit sherlock! > I really hate to Jimmy Wales people about this and it's rather embarrassing. But the Jimmy Wales ref made me laugh so much i've just sent xx quid.
rckt 3y ago
I was sponsoring this guy on github for some time. Then I wasn’t seeing any updates, for like a year or so and stopped sponsorship. Now using umami for analytics.
Gentil 3y ago
When I first added analytics to my website, I couldn't afford to pay for his then plan (There was a plan for opt-in pay for personal use and paid plan for commercial use. Or something of that sort IIRC). But when I move to a new gig, I wanted to pay for [name redacted] monthly plan but he stopped it in favour of github sponsors for some reason. I highly recommend and wish he moved back to the old pricing where he was allowing people to use it for personal use but was charging for commercial use. And it was super flexible since if you couldn't afford it, he mentioned you can email. Many more would pay for sure.
- lettergram 3y ago
  My guess is he change it because most of the people who could almost use the product were commercial users. In addition, none would pay for commercial use as they’d just use google analytics, etc for free. In turn, he probably didn’t have many, if any, paying users at that time
nperez 3y ago
Reminds me a lot of the boat I'm in - based on his CV it looks like he's self-taught and started around the same time I did. This market right now is killing us, and I've got to wonder if AI tools are filtering out self-taught devs more aggressively than they used to. In the worst case scenario, I have family I can move in with, but I don't know how to function in any other role after dedicating myself to this since childhood. Just going to keep refining skills and hope things turn around soon.
- mrweasel 3y ago
  > I've got to wonder if AI tools are filtering out self-taught devs more aggressively than they used to. I hope not. I have a CS degree, but some of the best and most prolific developers I've had the pleasure to work with have all be self-taught. One of the most talented .Net developers I've ever worked with had a masters degree in philosophy and was a trained furniture maker, when those things failed to pay the bills he taught himself C# and was easily the most talented and creative developer on our team. Selecting developers based on education is moronic, the self-taught people are often really talented and I can easily find CS majors who can't program at all. Education has almost zero reflection on your ability as a developer.
  - thelastparadise 3y ago
    Agree with the general idea if your post but... > Education has almost zero reflection on your ability as a developer. Can we stop using the word "education" as a propaganda word like this? When people use the word like this, what they really mean is "institutionalized education and/or indoctrination."
    - diggan 3y ago
      Isn't that the colloquial meaning of the word "education" already? In what cases do people use the word "education" to mean something else than "institutionalized education"? I feel like it's pretty clear what they mean by that, without having to make it into a political statement of "institutionalized indoctrination".
kramerger 3y ago
> I really hate to Jimmy Wales people about this Thanks for making me laugh, I think that's worth a few bucks. I donated every year to Wikipedia until I learned that (1) they have a huge chest of money, (2) their expenses could be much lower if they were not a 500-man SF company.
- mrweasel 3y ago
  Yeah, I don't care about the [name redacted], even if it looks like a nice project, but the Wales reference is worth a one time donation.
  - jhfdbkofdchk 3y ago
    Haha, same!
esun 3y ago
> I really hate to Jimmy Wales people about this Have a case of beer on me, mate.
- gigglesupstairs 3y ago
  Hey, I see an intense dislike for Jimmy Wales in this thread. Is there anything well written I can read about it to inform myself?
  - em-bee 3y ago
    it refers to how wikipedia is frequently asking for money when you browse it, and how some people get annoyed by that. it's not personal.
  - _1kfq 3y ago
    I don't dislike Jimmy Wales. "Please donate to Wikipedia" is one of the most common "please donate" type messages, and at least in the past it was usually written from the first person with a picture of Jimmy Wales' (usually unshaven) mug. It's just a joke. Nothing more.
  - input_sh 3y ago
    It's not for Jimmy Wales specifically, HN just tends to have a kneejerk reaction towards any NGOs asking for money. Mozilla, Wikimedia, Gnome, FSF, Creative Commons, it really doesn't matter. Any thread even tangentially related to such orgs is always met with dozens of comments where people go out of their way to either justify not donating, or saying how they used to donate but stopped because of X, Y and Z. The only exception to the rule is the Internet Archive.
  - deno 3y ago
    Wikipedia used to have this huge banner with the cofounder staring right at you as if making eye contact[1]. Inevitably, it became a meme for a time with other people seeking donations creating graphics mimicking the original. [1] https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/84439-2010-wikipedia-fundraising-campaign https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/84439-2010-wikipedia-fundrai...
mrtksn 3y ago
Isn’t this obvious candidate for a paid SaaS? Maybe someone more familiar with matter at hand can enlighten me on why the developer doesn’t simply make the hosted version a paid-for service instead of asking for donations?
- dewey 3y ago
  > why the developer doesn’t simply make the hosted version a paid-for service Because it's not always simple and being a good developer in many cases doesn't overlap with being good at marketing or business as it's not what they are passionate about. There's a good blog post about Plausible Analytics before and after the marketing co-founder joined, wasn't able to find it right now though.
  - mrtksn 3y ago
    Is it this one:https://plausible.io/blog/blog-post-changed-my-startup https://plausible.io/blog/blog-post-changed-my-startup
    - dewey 3y ago
      Maybe it was a Tweet, it was the MRR chart annotated with “when the marketing co founder joined” or something.
soneca 3y ago
Anyone with more context knows why they are looking for a job outside software development being a software developer?
- sureglymop 3y ago
  Maybe they have a hard time finding a software dev job, they seem to be self taught. Or perhaps just maximizing the process as in applying wherever possible.
- richrichardsson 3y ago
  Speculation: Social security in Ireland is similar to UK and you have to apply for any job to qualify. or Things are getting to the point he literally would do anything to not end up homeless.
upmostly 3y ago
Can I offer a more pessimistic view? This is Darwinism. If the author has a seemingly popular and monetisable (sic) product with real users, yet has failed to achieve the state of ramen profitable, then perhaps this is fate. Perhaps he's not able to be at the helm of a product that people would rely on in their production apps. What if the author of this app is unable to run the product successfully and is forced to close it down. What happens to the thousands of users who have integrated his product in their stack? An expensive migration. Loss of profit for them. Perhaps it's better to choose another product that is able to be profitable.
- mrtksn 3y ago
  >What if the author of this app is unable to run the product successfully and is forced to close it down. That’s why many businesses would not consider a free service or a product. The developer of SQLite sells licenses for his public domain code for this very reason.
  - upmostly 3y ago
    True. I knew my comment would be downvoted. Interestingly, one comment above said the author did not release an update in over a year...
    - mrtksn 3y ago
      Maybe your comment comes as a too harsh of a portrayal of the person who provides valuable product or service for free but IMHO from business standpoint its true. If you want money ask for it and I don't mean donations. The strange dynamic where you collect street cred in exchange for your work and expect to be taken care for doesn't work. Even if he finds a job and doesn't need donations, he will be working for people who wanted money and asked for it. It's the same thing with directly asking money for your services but with extra steps where you pay other people for doing the asking.
      - developer93 3y ago
manjunaths 3y ago
The contributing page is not loading for me, did we hug it to death?
jdsleppy 3y ago
Reading that other people donated helped me to do so. I'm writing this to help other people get over the decision hump. I self-host his [name redacted] on a fun site of mine. I like this style of app: small, simple binary that can share a machine with lots of other things.
- thelastparadise 3y ago
  Same. Donated $500.
slyall 3y ago
I was sponsoring him on Patreon for $2/month but it looks like he deleted his Patreon back in mid-2021 and I didn't notice. I'm using him for 4 of my personal websites ( 172, 1135, 25 and 22 visits in the last month ). Satisfied with the product so I've sponsored him on github.
newusertoday 3y ago
I don't understand why do developers provide hosted version for free? That too when you are short of cash. You have already provided opensource sw, whoever wants to use it can selfhost and bear the infrastructure costs. You can also provide paid version of it for people who don't want to self host. If you do want to subsidize have some other source of income. IT almost feels like self-inflicted pain.
- diggan 3y ago
  The hosted platform is specifically for small projects and personal homepages, not for big businesses. The platform they run probably have monthly expenses below 50 USD/month, I don't think that's their biggest expense, if you compare to rent and groceries...
- _1kfq 3y ago
  The infra costs are covered, with some to spare; that's not really the problem. It's more "I have this thing anyway, so might as well ask people using it for some help now I really need it." That's why it's in the release notes (never expected it to be posted here).
goat-throwaway 3y ago
As a team lead I have a capped budget that I can spend on tools/saas etc. Unfortunately I cant do a donation using this. Indie devs need to understand this, put up a pro plan and a checkout link that sends an invoice so that finance folks are ok. I hope he pulls through this, we need more indie software.
- distances 3y ago
  Agreed. A paid plan with a proper invoice is so so much easier to file as a business expense, both at a big business and as an independent. I don't know how to even start doing that with a donation.
- trevyn 3y ago
  To clarify, a “paid plan” with zero benefits over free use is OK?
  - toldyouso2022 3y ago
    Put "faster support" and then don't do anything different (or maybe do, it's money after all)
mg 3y ago
Compare that to Plausible: Over $2M in revenue last year. Plausible started in 2019. Not sure when [name redacted] started. Clicking on "blame" for the readme file in the repo, I see a commit from 5 years ago. I can very much empathize that adding a "buy" button is a hump to get over when you just wanna build something cool and share it with like-minded people. I have the same issue with every project I build. I guess one should train to jump over one's shadow in this regard.
- diggan 3y ago
  > Not sure when [name redacted] started "Hello, world" - [name redacted] committed on May 28, 2019 - [link redacted] Plausible: "Initial commit" - ukutaht committed - on Sep 2, 2019 - 779d64e19a26a4e4944d4f0d7d9e280a27fbc6e5 - https://github.com/plausible/analytics/commit/779d64e19a26a4e4944d4f0d7d9e280a27fbc6e5 https://github.com/plausible/analytics/commit/779d64e19a26a4...
- spiffytech 3y ago
  [name redacted] previously offered paid plans. Not sure why that changed. [link redacted]
- _1kfq 3y ago
  [name redacted] started a few months before Plausible. Giving it away for free didn't help, but "making money" was never really a goal as such. I think "being free" is important if you want to be a viable alternative for Google Analytics. €9/month is nothing for a business, but who is paying that for a blog or hobby site (or even some small businesses)? I already decided a few years ago that "covers hosting" is good enough. It's just that circumstances conspired to put in this rather uncomfortable position.
  - endofreach 3y ago
    As much as i admire that: The language you wrote that in, only exists, because google found a way to grow by making money. To be fair, not sure if this is a pro or contra: [name redacted] wouldn't need to exist, if google didn't find the way they did, to make money. Anyway, cool product. Love OSS but don't mind paying for simple solutions as a business. It's not only about saving time but also about keeping focus.
pgt 3y ago
Slightly disappointed that this does not [name redacted] in my yard.
ushakov 3y ago
His resume says he's worked on [name redacted] since 2019 full-time? [link redacted]
svnsvnese 3y ago
This is slightly adjacent to the topic but I think a very important one. I do not know much about [name redacted] and the creator but after looking at his resume, I feel he obviously has a very marketable skills and with over 10+ year of experience, I feel one should have enough put away for rough times like this (forgive me if I am missing some context about this specific case, but I think this point applies in general to everyone imho) I've had my own troubles in the past (and learned from it), where I made unwise investment choices and when some unforeseen circumstances came up, I found myself cash-poor and struggling a bit, even though I was employed at that time. Here's the wiki from bogleheads [0] that gives a good framework on how to think about investing and what to prioritize. First thing to do if you do not already, when the times are good is to build an emergency fund. [0] https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Prioritizing_investments https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Prioritizing_investments
- _1kfq 3y ago
  Well, there's a long chain of events over the last ~3 years leading up to this point, but I don't really feel like explaining everything in detail (and I don't think it's all that interesting in the first place). Also I never made that much in software dev in the first place.
_1kfq 3y ago
Thanks everyone! I should have updated this last week as I had raised enough money and I'm starting a job next Monday. So things should be grand going forward for now.
- ushakov 3y ago
  Really glad things turned out well for you! I'm in a similar position now, so if anyone is looking for a full-stack TypeScript engineer with open-source background (https://github.com/mishushakov https://github.com/mishushakov) let's chat!
- CaptainFever 3y ago
  That's awesome! Happy that it turned out well.
- ismaildonmez 3y ago
  I love [link redacted], all the best luck with everything!
janmo 3y ago
Here are a few ideas to build the next great analytics tool, these are the main reasons why I build my own little tool for my websites: 1. Find a way to also count users with Ad Blocker. Google Analytics and even Plausible (unless when self hosted) don't track users with an Ad Blocker. 2. Show how many users are using an Ad Blocker, this is a very important metric when a site is relying on ad revenue. It turned out that 30-33% of my traffic was using an Ad Blocker, which prompted me to implement a fallback where I show the user a banner with an affiliate link instead. 3. Offer an unlimited free tier, under the condition that a summary of the stats is visible to everyone, a bit like Github used to work. Users can then hide to make their stats private.
- arbol 3y ago
  Ad blocker tracking is easy. You just proxy the calls to GA/plausible via some other domain.
- _1kfq 3y ago
  The first two aren't technically possible. And also not desirable, IMHO. That said, [name redacted] can import pageviews from logfiles like goaccess, so that's kind of the closest you can get (although then it's harder to filter bots, so it's more skewed the other way). That said, I do wish tools like uBlock would make it easier to give people more choice in what to block and not block, but that's not up to me (also in terms of ads; the other day I saw a site which has just <img src="/ad.png">, which I don't really see any problem with, and uBlock goes out of its way to block that – meh).
  - jddj 3y ago
    I recently had a page import something like site_stats.js (site meant as in a physical building/location) from the same domain as the html request and ublock blocked it. Had to rename the bundle. Thanks for [name redacted] btw, I've got a little website that hosts useful information that's hard to find otherwise for a little community (~20 visits / day) and [name redacted] has been reliably telling me whether or not people still use it for a few years now.
nop_slide 3y ago
I’ve been sponsoring on GitHub for probably two years now, didn’t even realize the paid plans went away (that was what I initially sponsored for). Have nothing else to add other than [name redacted] has been awesome.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tempaccount1234 3y ago
First time I heard a about this and am a bit disappointed that it’s not a tool for [name redacted] at all.

205 points by genzer 3y ago

I made a one time contribution. I hope there are other folks who benefit from such self hosted software that will give him a financial hand.

moepstar 3y ago
Same - i dunno if i ever have a use for the project/software, but when he wrote that he doesn't want to "Jimmy Wales" people i just had to :D Also: sometimes, life is just brutal - admitting you actually do need help (and even moreso in such a public way) itself has to be rewarded and commended!
- ilaksh 3y ago
  I have a different take. I think it's a warning to people that use the software: they can either chip in a little bit, or have no expectation whatsoever for there ever to be another release. I think that there is an ethical obligation here on the part of active users to donate at least $2 each, assuming that the developer isn't making up a story.
  - smabie 3y ago
    There's no ethical obligation to help someone who decided to upload code you can use to the internet.
    - Towaway69 3y ago
      Now that's brutal. Of course there isn't and you are quite right but there are such things as morals.
    - dimask 3y ago
      If one needs the code to be maintained, not supporting may mean that the code may stop being maintained, which may mean that one will stop being able to use it in the future. This may or may not be related to ethics, depending on what one calls or defines as ethics, but the reality is that free rides always carry a risk, even if there is no ethical obligation to pay for the ride. Of course, that depends on what value one gives to the code, and stuff like the cost of not being able to use it in the future due to lack of maintenance, or the cost of having to put in effort to maintain it oneself. But while there are no such ethical obligations tied to the use of some free software per se, imo there are ethics (or "ethics") tied to the interdepedencies and connections within such a social system in the sense of it being sustainable and able to self-perpetuate.
  - sneak 3y ago
    Free software is a gift. It does not create an obligation when one receives it.
    - Towaway69 3y ago
      Life is a gift that also comes with no obligations. Pity everyone takes it so seriously.
    - osmsucks 3y ago
      Free software is generally considered "free as in free speech". Doesn't always imply gratis, as people still need to pay their bills.
      - sneak 3y ago
        It’s both, as a point of law. If it’s free as in speech, it is also necessarily free as in beer. That’s what the freedom to redistribute means.
    - Temporary_31337 3y ago
      You should read about psychology of gifts and how it helped the white man to conquer America. Native Americans were such honourable people that they felt every gift must be repaid and more.
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    > ...assuming that the developer isn't making up a story. Even if the developer is a millionaire, it's proper to chip in a few bucks for free stuff that you use and enjoy. Sob story or no sob story. But honestly, the real solution is for people to stop with this open source nonsense and start charging for their work. There are thousands of potential customers for every boutique app or code solution. Nobody is entitled to free code, especially not the billion dollar companies who are the main beneficiaries of the hard work of open source programmers.

AYBABTME 3y ago

Here's a one time donation. The project looks interesting, I'll give it a spin next time I need something like that. If it's embeddable as a library that's even better!

MrEd 3y ago

> also turns out that CV with mainly software development is not all that useful for lot of things outside software dev :-/ No shit sherlock! > I really hate to Jimmy Wales people about this and it's rather embarrassing. But the Jimmy Wales ref made me laugh so much i've just sent xx quid.

rckt 3y ago

I was sponsoring this guy on github for some time. Then I wasn’t seeing any updates, for like a year or so and stopped sponsorship. Now using umami for analytics.

Gentil 3y ago

When I first added analytics to my website, I couldn't afford to pay for his then plan (There was a plan for opt-in pay for personal use and paid plan for commercial use. Or something of that sort IIRC). But when I move to a new gig, I wanted to pay for [name redacted] monthly plan but he stopped it in favour of github sponsors for some reason. I highly recommend and wish he moved back to the old pricing where he was allowing people to use it for personal use but was charging for commercial use. And it was super flexible since if you couldn't afford it, he mentioned you can email. Many more would pay for sure.

lettergram 3y ago
My guess is he change it because most of the people who could almost use the product were commercial users. In addition, none would pay for commercial use as they’d just use google analytics, etc for free. In turn, he probably didn’t have many, if any, paying users at that time

nperez 3y ago

Reminds me a lot of the boat I'm in - based on his CV it looks like he's self-taught and started around the same time I did. This market right now is killing us, and I've got to wonder if AI tools are filtering out self-taught devs more aggressively than they used to. In the worst case scenario, I have family I can move in with, but I don't know how to function in any other role after dedicating myself to this since childhood. Just going to keep refining skills and hope things turn around soon.

mrweasel 3y ago
> I've got to wonder if AI tools are filtering out self-taught devs more aggressively than they used to. I hope not. I have a CS degree, but some of the best and most prolific developers I've had the pleasure to work with have all be self-taught. One of the most talented .Net developers I've ever worked with had a masters degree in philosophy and was a trained furniture maker, when those things failed to pay the bills he taught himself C# and was easily the most talented and creative developer on our team. Selecting developers based on education is moronic, the self-taught people are often really talented and I can easily find CS majors who can't program at all. Education has almost zero reflection on your ability as a developer.
- thelastparadise 3y ago
  Agree with the general idea if your post but... > Education has almost zero reflection on your ability as a developer. Can we stop using the word "education" as a propaganda word like this? When people use the word like this, what they really mean is "institutionalized education and/or indoctrination."
  - diggan 3y ago
    Isn't that the colloquial meaning of the word "education" already? In what cases do people use the word "education" to mean something else than "institutionalized education"? I feel like it's pretty clear what they mean by that, without having to make it into a political statement of "institutionalized indoctrination".

kramerger 3y ago

> I really hate to Jimmy Wales people about this Thanks for making me laugh, I think that's worth a few bucks. I donated every year to Wikipedia until I learned that (1) they have a huge chest of money, (2) their expenses could be much lower if they were not a 500-man SF company.

mrweasel 3y ago
Yeah, I don't care about the [name redacted], even if it looks like a nice project, but the Wales reference is worth a one time donation.
- jhfdbkofdchk 3y ago
  Haha, same!

esun 3y ago

> I really hate to Jimmy Wales people about this Have a case of beer on me, mate.

gigglesupstairs 3y ago
Hey, I see an intense dislike for Jimmy Wales in this thread. Is there anything well written I can read about it to inform myself?
- em-bee 3y ago
  it refers to how wikipedia is frequently asking for money when you browse it, and how some people get annoyed by that. it's not personal.
- _1kfq 3y ago
  I don't dislike Jimmy Wales. "Please donate to Wikipedia" is one of the most common "please donate" type messages, and at least in the past it was usually written from the first person with a picture of Jimmy Wales' (usually unshaven) mug. It's just a joke. Nothing more.
- input_sh 3y ago
  It's not for Jimmy Wales specifically, HN just tends to have a kneejerk reaction towards any NGOs asking for money. Mozilla, Wikimedia, Gnome, FSF, Creative Commons, it really doesn't matter. Any thread even tangentially related to such orgs is always met with dozens of comments where people go out of their way to either justify not donating, or saying how they used to donate but stopped because of X, Y and Z. The only exception to the rule is the Internet Archive.
- deno 3y ago
  Wikipedia used to have this huge banner with the cofounder staring right at you as if making eye contact[1]. Inevitably, it became a meme for a time with other people seeking donations creating graphics mimicking the original. [1] https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/84439-2010-wikipedia-fundraising-campaign https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/84439-2010-wikipedia-fundrai...

mrtksn 3y ago

Isn’t this obvious candidate for a paid SaaS? Maybe someone more familiar with matter at hand can enlighten me on why the developer doesn’t simply make the hosted version a paid-for service instead of asking for donations?

dewey 3y ago
> why the developer doesn’t simply make the hosted version a paid-for service Because it's not always simple and being a good developer in many cases doesn't overlap with being good at marketing or business as it's not what they are passionate about. There's a good blog post about Plausible Analytics before and after the marketing co-founder joined, wasn't able to find it right now though.
- mrtksn 3y ago
  Is it this one:https://plausible.io/blog/blog-post-changed-my-startup https://plausible.io/blog/blog-post-changed-my-startup
  - dewey 3y ago
    Maybe it was a Tweet, it was the MRR chart annotated with “when the marketing co founder joined” or something.

soneca 3y ago

Anyone with more context knows why they are looking for a job outside software development being a software developer?

sureglymop 3y ago
Maybe they have a hard time finding a software dev job, they seem to be self taught. Or perhaps just maximizing the process as in applying wherever possible.
richrichardsson 3y ago
Speculation: Social security in Ireland is similar to UK and you have to apply for any job to qualify. or Things are getting to the point he literally would do anything to not end up homeless.

upmostly 3y ago

Can I offer a more pessimistic view? This is Darwinism. If the author has a seemingly popular and monetisable (sic) product with real users, yet has failed to achieve the state of ramen profitable, then perhaps this is fate. Perhaps he's not able to be at the helm of a product that people would rely on in their production apps. What if the author of this app is unable to run the product successfully and is forced to close it down. What happens to the thousands of users who have integrated his product in their stack? An expensive migration. Loss of profit for them. Perhaps it's better to choose another product that is able to be profitable.

mrtksn 3y ago
>What if the author of this app is unable to run the product successfully and is forced to close it down. That’s why many businesses would not consider a free service or a product. The developer of SQLite sells licenses for his public domain code for this very reason.
- upmostly 3y ago
  True. I knew my comment would be downvoted. Interestingly, one comment above said the author did not release an update in over a year...
  - mrtksn 3y ago
    Maybe your comment comes as a too harsh of a portrayal of the person who provides valuable product or service for free but IMHO from business standpoint its true. If you want money ask for it and I don't mean donations. The strange dynamic where you collect street cred in exchange for your work and expect to be taken care for doesn't work. Even if he finds a job and doesn't need donations, he will be working for people who wanted money and asked for it. It's the same thing with directly asking money for your services but with extra steps where you pay other people for doing the asking.
    - developer93 3y ago

manjunaths 3y ago

The contributing page is not loading for me, did we hug it to death?

jdsleppy 3y ago

Reading that other people donated helped me to do so. I'm writing this to help other people get over the decision hump. I self-host his [name redacted] on a fun site of mine. I like this style of app: small, simple binary that can share a machine with lots of other things.

thelastparadise 3y ago
Same. Donated $500.

slyall 3y ago

I was sponsoring him on Patreon for $2/month but it looks like he deleted his Patreon back in mid-2021 and I didn't notice. I'm using him for 4 of my personal websites ( 172, 1135, 25 and 22 visits in the last month ). Satisfied with the product so I've sponsored him on github.

newusertoday 3y ago

I don't understand why do developers provide hosted version for free? That too when you are short of cash. You have already provided opensource sw, whoever wants to use it can selfhost and bear the infrastructure costs. You can also provide paid version of it for people who don't want to self host. If you do want to subsidize have some other source of income. IT almost feels like self-inflicted pain.

diggan 3y ago
The hosted platform is specifically for small projects and personal homepages, not for big businesses. The platform they run probably have monthly expenses below 50 USD/month, I don't think that's their biggest expense, if you compare to rent and groceries...
_1kfq 3y ago
The infra costs are covered, with some to spare; that's not really the problem. It's more "I have this thing anyway, so might as well ask people using it for some help now I really need it." That's why it's in the release notes (never expected it to be posted here).

goat-throwaway 3y ago

As a team lead I have a capped budget that I can spend on tools/saas etc. Unfortunately I cant do a donation using this. Indie devs need to understand this, put up a pro plan and a checkout link that sends an invoice so that finance folks are ok. I hope he pulls through this, we need more indie software.

distances 3y ago
Agreed. A paid plan with a proper invoice is so so much easier to file as a business expense, both at a big business and as an independent. I don't know how to even start doing that with a donation.
trevyn 3y ago
To clarify, a “paid plan” with zero benefits over free use is OK?
- toldyouso2022 3y ago
  Put "faster support" and then don't do anything different (or maybe do, it's money after all)

mg 3y ago

Compare that to Plausible: Over $2M in revenue last year. Plausible started in 2019. Not sure when [name redacted] started. Clicking on "blame" for the readme file in the repo, I see a commit from 5 years ago. I can very much empathize that adding a "buy" button is a hump to get over when you just wanna build something cool and share it with like-minded people. I have the same issue with every project I build. I guess one should train to jump over one's shadow in this regard.

diggan 3y ago
> Not sure when [name redacted] started "Hello, world" - [name redacted] committed on May 28, 2019 - [link redacted] Plausible: "Initial commit" - ukutaht committed - on Sep 2, 2019 - 779d64e19a26a4e4944d4f0d7d9e280a27fbc6e5 - https://github.com/plausible/analytics/commit/779d64e19a26a4e4944d4f0d7d9e280a27fbc6e5 https://github.com/plausible/analytics/commit/779d64e19a26a4...
spiffytech 3y ago
[name redacted] previously offered paid plans. Not sure why that changed. [link redacted]
_1kfq 3y ago
[name redacted] started a few months before Plausible. Giving it away for free didn't help, but "making money" was never really a goal as such. I think "being free" is important if you want to be a viable alternative for Google Analytics. €9/month is nothing for a business, but who is paying that for a blog or hobby site (or even some small businesses)? I already decided a few years ago that "covers hosting" is good enough. It's just that circumstances conspired to put in this rather uncomfortable position.
- endofreach 3y ago
  As much as i admire that: The language you wrote that in, only exists, because google found a way to grow by making money. To be fair, not sure if this is a pro or contra: [name redacted] wouldn't need to exist, if google didn't find the way they did, to make money. Anyway, cool product. Love OSS but don't mind paying for simple solutions as a business. It's not only about saving time but also about keeping focus.

pgt 3y ago

Slightly disappointed that this does not [name redacted] in my yard.

ushakov 3y ago

His resume says he's worked on [name redacted] since 2019 full-time? [link redacted]

svnsvnese 3y ago

This is slightly adjacent to the topic but I think a very important one. I do not know much about [name redacted] and the creator but after looking at his resume, I feel he obviously has a very marketable skills and with over 10+ year of experience, I feel one should have enough put away for rough times like this (forgive me if I am missing some context about this specific case, but I think this point applies in general to everyone imho) I've had my own troubles in the past (and learned from it), where I made unwise investment choices and when some unforeseen circumstances came up, I found myself cash-poor and struggling a bit, even though I was employed at that time. Here's the wiki from bogleheads [0] that gives a good framework on how to think about investing and what to prioritize. First thing to do if you do not already, when the times are good is to build an emergency fund. [0] https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Prioritizing_investments https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Prioritizing_investments

_1kfq 3y ago
Well, there's a long chain of events over the last ~3 years leading up to this point, but I don't really feel like explaining everything in detail (and I don't think it's all that interesting in the first place). Also I never made that much in software dev in the first place.

_1kfq 3y ago

Thanks everyone! I should have updated this last week as I had raised enough money and I'm starting a job next Monday. So things should be grand going forward for now.

ushakov 3y ago
Really glad things turned out well for you! I'm in a similar position now, so if anyone is looking for a full-stack TypeScript engineer with open-source background (https://github.com/mishushakov https://github.com/mishushakov) let's chat!
CaptainFever 3y ago
That's awesome! Happy that it turned out well.
ismaildonmez 3y ago
I love [link redacted], all the best luck with everything!

janmo 3y ago

Here are a few ideas to build the next great analytics tool, these are the main reasons why I build my own little tool for my websites: 1. Find a way to also count users with Ad Blocker. Google Analytics and even Plausible (unless when self hosted) don't track users with an Ad Blocker. 2. Show how many users are using an Ad Blocker, this is a very important metric when a site is relying on ad revenue. It turned out that 30-33% of my traffic was using an Ad Blocker, which prompted me to implement a fallback where I show the user a banner with an affiliate link instead. 3. Offer an unlimited free tier, under the condition that a summary of the stats is visible to everyone, a bit like Github used to work. Users can then hide to make their stats private.

arbol 3y ago
Ad blocker tracking is easy. You just proxy the calls to GA/plausible via some other domain.
_1kfq 3y ago
The first two aren't technically possible. And also not desirable, IMHO. That said, [name redacted] can import pageviews from logfiles like goaccess, so that's kind of the closest you can get (although then it's harder to filter bots, so it's more skewed the other way). That said, I do wish tools like uBlock would make it easier to give people more choice in what to block and not block, but that's not up to me (also in terms of ads; the other day I saw a site which has just <img src="/ad.png">, which I don't really see any problem with, and uBlock goes out of its way to block that – meh).
- jddj 3y ago
  I recently had a page import something like site_stats.js (site meant as in a physical building/location) from the same domain as the html request and ublock blocked it. Had to rename the bundle. Thanks for [name redacted] btw, I've got a little website that hosts useful information that's hard to find otherwise for a little community (~20 visits / day) and [name redacted] has been reliably telling me whether or not people still use it for a few years now.

nop_slide 3y ago

I’ve been sponsoring on GitHub for probably two years now, didn’t even realize the paid plans went away (that was what I initially sponsored for). Have nothing else to add other than [name redacted] has been awesome.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

tempaccount1234 3y ago

First time I heard a about this and am a bit disappointed that it’s not a tool for [name redacted] at all.