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> Web needs to make money I don’t think this is true. No one “needs” to make money. Museums don’t need to make money. OSS doesn’t need to make money. The web
by prepend 2y ago
> Web needs to make money
I don’t think this is true. No one “needs” to make money. Museums don’t need to make money. OSS doesn’t need to make money.
The web has value without making money.
But even if it does make money, it doesn’t need to maximize profits at the expense of user privacy and joy.
- happyraul 2y agoHow do OSS devs support themselves without money?
- pennomi 2y agoThe Stardew Valley gambit - quit programming and take up subsistence farming.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nolist_policy 2y agoGood luck. Farming is a hard business if you want to make money. And you'll need money for electricity, fuel, medicine, etc.
- xboxnolifes 2y agoThe same way you can make model trains and not make money.
- elaus 2y agoUsually they are supported by donations, therefore they don't need to sell their user's data or their software.
- prepend 2y agoI have an employer who pays me to do thing X. And they don’t care that I also work on thing Y a little bit. I think there’s lots of software written by people who have jobs and code because it’s fun. For example, Linus Torvalds made Subsurface [0] as open source. He had a job while he made this. He didn’t get paid for it directly, but it’s not like paying him extra would make it better. [0] https://subsurface-divelog.org/ https://subsurface-divelog.org/
- no_way 2y agoMaximising profits and being sustainable are 2 different things. Museums do not need to make money because they are funded externally. It is like saying artists do not need to make money. You seem to go to the very extremes.
- jraph 2y agoI'm certainly in favor of free software projects making enough money to be sustainable. It could be zero in some conditions, but in the other cases, I'm also against ads. Fortunately, there are other ways of making money, without compromising the "open source" / "free software" part: - consulting (including prioritizing new features and fixes) - support - providing an actual paid service - selling free software extensions (and yes, that means someone can recompile the extension and distribute it gratis - that's what happening with OSMAnd+ on F-Droid, but they are still doing fine)
- tehlike 2y agoMuseums do get money from somewhere. Where do you get them for web?
- prepend 2y agoSame place as museums. Benefactors. Check out Wikipedia for an example of a huge site that doesn’t make money and just runs on donations. I run my crappy blog and a bunch of other sites for “free” because I just pay the fees.