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I think we need to compare our industry with other industries. No other industry relies on free labour from random people, which comes with no support or promis

I think we need to compare our industry with other industries. No other industry relies on free labour from random people, which comes with no support or promises. I once told some non-techie folk about some code I wrote. It did something super simple and wasn't that big. They were all asking why I didn't sell it and thought it was crazy I would give it away for free with the BSD license. It was 900 lines of code... For us, that's nothing but for an average person they just think "I built it, I'll sell it"

Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
Ya I also believe it this way, Mostly I like to build stuff for my own problems or something that I just find fascinating. I am still in high school, so I was doing some question sheet that our teachers provided and there was an answer key but it had answers of everything. Now I don't know how other people approached it but I am really impatient and so I just open up answer key side by side but it reveals every answer. So I firstly created an AI to ocr to card generator but it was an hit or miss and so I discussed it with my friend and he said that he used to use paint and somehow in his convuluted manner basically have a slider which would reveal answer... I found it incredible and so I just created a single index.html that can do it. (Although vibe coded), Now I can't even think of monetizing such ideas when I realize that there are creators of some really incredible stuff and long convulated stuff and even they aren't sponsored so I have always felt that the scripts that I write or projects around such ~.5-3k loc. I just don't think of monetization. I just don't know.. I like hacking stuff, I just feel more comfortable rebuilding stuff even if its mediocre if I feel like I can change it to suit my purpose better I think that the only other industry that is gives as much completely free stuff might be research/science related, but maybe its due to the fact that computer are computer science too and thus related to academics. I really just love tinkering with software and just the aspect of freedom that it can provide , but sadly, I find it just hard to really make money without being a job and such stories on which we are discussing, just makes me feel like I am kinda right. On one hand we have 100 million payouts to researchers and on the other we have this, such disparity is kinda sad I suppose.
jve 1y ago
Other comparison would be that we are equipped with tools (software) other people build completely for free. And we can improve those tools and propose them to be implemented (PR). Or just continue using our custom-modified tool (Forking). And we often get the luxury to ask questions and receive answers (Issues) directly from the manufacturer (author, contributor). And we need not much investment to set up our own factory... thus "materials" can be free and then we give away our product.
jerf 1y ago
The problem is that 900 lines of code is also nothing for your potential customers as well. Non-programmers have a very poor ability to judge how difficult something is and how worth paying for it is. 900 lines is probably less effort for most organizations than it is to evaluate paying for the functionality. Out on the super, super far end of the distribution you may have things like paying for what is essentially 900-ish lines of extremely, extremely carefully vetted code for things like encryption, but that is very, very exceptional. I've got a few open source projects on my GitHub that are in the 900 line range, and I know they're used in a few "interesting" places but I'm not crying about it because the simple truth is the commercial value of that code is simply $0. If I tried to sell it to the people using it, they would perfectly rationally just say no. I am abundantly compensated for it by all the other open source software I get to use.

Imustaskforhelp 1y ago

Ya I also believe it this way, Mostly I like to build stuff for my own problems or something that I just find fascinating. I am still in high school, so I was doing some question sheet that our teachers provided and there was an answer key but it had answers of everything. Now I don't know how other people approached it but I am really impatient and so I just open up answer key side by side but it reveals every answer. So I firstly created an AI to ocr to card generator but it was an hit or miss and so I discussed it with my friend and he said that he used to use paint and somehow in his convuluted manner basically have a slider which would reveal answer... I found it incredible and so I just created a single index.html that can do it. (Although vibe coded), Now I can't even think of monetizing such ideas when I realize that there are creators of some really incredible stuff and long convulated stuff and even they aren't sponsored so I have always felt that the scripts that I write or projects around such ~.5-3k loc. I just don't think of monetization. I just don't know.. I like hacking stuff, I just feel more comfortable rebuilding stuff even if its mediocre if I feel like I can change it to suit my purpose better I think that the only other industry that is gives as much completely free stuff might be research/science related, but maybe its due to the fact that computer are computer science too and thus related to academics. I really just love tinkering with software and just the aspect of freedom that it can provide , but sadly, I find it just hard to really make money without being a job and such stories on which we are discussing, just makes me feel like I am kinda right. On one hand we have 100 million payouts to researchers and on the other we have this, such disparity is kinda sad I suppose.

jve 1y ago

Other comparison would be that we are equipped with tools (software) other people build completely for free. And we can improve those tools and propose them to be implemented (PR). Or just continue using our custom-modified tool (Forking). And we often get the luxury to ask questions and receive answers (Issues) directly from the manufacturer (author, contributor). And we need not much investment to set up our own factory... thus "materials" can be free and then we give away our product.

jerf 1y ago

The problem is that 900 lines of code is also nothing for your potential customers as well. Non-programmers have a very poor ability to judge how difficult something is and how worth paying for it is. 900 lines is probably less effort for most organizations than it is to evaluate paying for the functionality. Out on the super, super far end of the distribution you may have things like paying for what is essentially 900-ish lines of extremely, extremely carefully vetted code for things like encryption, but that is very, very exceptional. I've got a few open source projects on my GitHub that are in the 900 line range, and I know they're used in a few "interesting" places but I'm not crying about it because the simple truth is the commercial value of that code is simply $0. If I tried to sell it to the people using it, they would perfectly rationally just say no. I am abundantly compensated for it by all the other open source software I get to use.