7 ms·

Every time I hear of people complaining about paying for software I wonder what people on here do for a living. Is everyone on here getting paid for developing

Every time I hear of people complaining about paying for software I wonder what people on here do for a living. Is everyone on here getting paid for developing software that’s free?

antiframe 6mo ago
I used to when I worked outside of games. I worked on a payments backend for an etailing website. The software cost was paid for by items purchased. I don't think anyone considers buying an item at a site like target.com considers them paying for software. That software is for the businesses benefit. I don't buy any (non gaming) software for any other purposes because most of the time the pricing model, licensing model, or lack of platform support is not right for me. I don't want SaaS for anything because things constantly change (almost always for the worse) from under me. I don't want to have to pay a subscription to play my music, watch my videos, or take my notes.
- mvanbaak 6mo ago
  > I don't think anyone considers buying an item at a site like target.com considers them paying for software. You do know target adds the cost for their web presence to their cost centre, and you as customer pays for it right?
  - antiframe 6mo ago
    I do. But I also know that if ask anyone "Do you pay for Target's software?", they are likely to say "no" or "huh". The context was why do people who complain about software costs not work for free. Or maybe a better way to express my thought: one can work in a paying software job and still dislike "paying for software" where that means a subscription to play local media files.
ignoramous 6mo ago
You may find Kevin Kelly's post, "Technology wants to be free" (2007), interesting. ... five traits of networked technology – perfect market competition, price transparency, innovation sharing, collaboration, and expanding markets – ceaselessly push technology toward the free. ... There is an unarticulated assumption held by many people that the natural state of any created thing is expensive. Technology is believed to be born dear and costly, and it is only through relentless hard work that things can be made cheap. Indeed, according to this perspective, everything is naturally expensive, and would remain so, but for genius and sweat. This natural level of expense and scarcity can only be lowered by applying constant energy, favorable legislation, and technological vigilance, otherwise the price of a good may spring back up to its natural elevated level. God forbid a disaster or calamity collapses the system and allows the prices of everything to revert to their true unattainable price. https://kk.org/thetechnium/technology-want https://kk.org/thetechnium/technology-want / https://archive.vn/anPxH https://archive.vn/anPxH
pibaker 6mo ago
"The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
- ndsipa_pomu 6mo ago
  And under Capitalism, how much is the national debt now?
- cassianoleal 6mo ago
  In that sentence, who's "you" and who's "other people"?
oaweoifjwpo 6mo ago
I am. Plenty of software companies give away software for free and make money on support, hosting, network effects, ads, etc. But also, paying for software as an enterprise vs as a personal user are very different things. I don't get proper support, bugs and feature requests never get fixed, if a regression is introduced I'm just out of luck completely, etc. There's no SLAs. If the software is open source I can at least fix issues myself for myself. If I'm paying for software I'm also paying for new bugs, lack of support, and constantly increasing prices. Somehow by paying money I end up with lower agency.
array_key_first 6mo ago
It's not that people are even mad about paying for software, it's that paid-for software is often worse in unique ways that free software is not! Which is maybe shocking, but not so shocking when one considers that money intrinsicly corrupts everything it touches as it re-aligns incentives. For example, a lot of paid for software actively disrespects the user. A lot of paid for software degrades in quality over time. A lot of paid for software has far too many ads. A lot of paid for software loses features over time. And on and on. In my experience, that's just not the case in open-source land. I donate for virtually all my open-source software, usually a lot. To me, it's not just that KDE is free and Windows costs money for instance. It's that Windows sucks major donkey dick and fucks its own customers up the ass, and, on top of it, continues to degrade, whereas KDE is amazing software that gets better and better by the day.

Every time I hear of people complaining about paying for software I wonder what people on here do for a living. Is everyone on here getting paid for developing software that’s free?

antiframe 6mo ago

I used to when I worked outside of games. I worked on a payments backend for an etailing website. The software cost was paid for by items purchased. I don't think anyone considers buying an item at a site like target.com considers them paying for software. That software is for the businesses benefit. I don't buy any (non gaming) software for any other purposes because most of the time the pricing model, licensing model, or lack of platform support is not right for me. I don't want SaaS for anything because things constantly change (almost always for the worse) from under me. I don't want to have to pay a subscription to play my music, watch my videos, or take my notes.

mvanbaak 6mo ago
> I don't think anyone considers buying an item at a site like target.com considers them paying for software. You do know target adds the cost for their web presence to their cost centre, and you as customer pays for it right?
- antiframe 6mo ago
  I do. But I also know that if ask anyone "Do you pay for Target's software?", they are likely to say "no" or "huh". The context was why do people who complain about software costs not work for free. Or maybe a better way to express my thought: one can work in a paying software job and still dislike "paying for software" where that means a subscription to play local media files.

ignoramous 6mo ago

You may find Kevin Kelly's post, "Technology wants to be free" (2007), interesting. ... five traits of networked technology – perfect market competition, price transparency, innovation sharing, collaboration, and expanding markets – ceaselessly push technology toward the free. ... There is an unarticulated assumption held by many people that the natural state of any created thing is expensive. Technology is believed to be born dear and costly, and it is only through relentless hard work that things can be made cheap. Indeed, according to this perspective, everything is naturally expensive, and would remain so, but for genius and sweat. This natural level of expense and scarcity can only be lowered by applying constant energy, favorable legislation, and technological vigilance, otherwise the price of a good may spring back up to its natural elevated level. God forbid a disaster or calamity collapses the system and allows the prices of everything to revert to their true unattainable price. https://kk.org/thetechnium/technology-want https://kk.org/thetechnium/technology-want / https://archive.vn/anPxH https://archive.vn/anPxH

pibaker 6mo ago

"The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."

ndsipa_pomu 6mo ago
And under Capitalism, how much is the national debt now?
cassianoleal 6mo ago
In that sentence, who's "you" and who's "other people"?

oaweoifjwpo 6mo ago

I am. Plenty of software companies give away software for free and make money on support, hosting, network effects, ads, etc. But also, paying for software as an enterprise vs as a personal user are very different things. I don't get proper support, bugs and feature requests never get fixed, if a regression is introduced I'm just out of luck completely, etc. There's no SLAs. If the software is open source I can at least fix issues myself for myself. If I'm paying for software I'm also paying for new bugs, lack of support, and constantly increasing prices. Somehow by paying money I end up with lower agency.

array_key_first 6mo ago

It's not that people are even mad about paying for software, it's that paid-for software is often worse in unique ways that free software is not! Which is maybe shocking, but not so shocking when one considers that money intrinsicly corrupts everything it touches as it re-aligns incentives. For example, a lot of paid for software actively disrespects the user. A lot of paid for software degrades in quality over time. A lot of paid for software has far too many ads. A lot of paid for software loses features over time. And on and on. In my experience, that's just not the case in open-source land. I donate for virtually all my open-source software, usually a lot. To me, it's not just that KDE is free and Windows costs money for instance. It's that Windows sucks major donkey dick and fucks its own customers up the ass, and, on top of it, continues to degrade, whereas KDE is amazing software that gets better and better by the day.