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I don't understand the attitude about donations. The developer wrote an awe-inspiring work of art and has been giving it away without demand for years. He asks

I don't understand the attitude about donations. The developer wrote an awe-inspiring work of art and has been giving it away without demand for years. He asks for donations with clear set goals of what they go toward for improving the software. Take it or leave it. Yes, an open-source version would be valuable and I invite anyone here to start one.

api 11y ago
It's fine to spend $5 on a cup of coffee, but "information wants to be free" even if it's the product of years and years of grueling work. This petulant entitled mentality is vile, especially when it's directed at a free labor of love like this. If people don't like it they shouldn't use it, and nobody is making anyone donate anything. Edit: the thing I'm really responding to here is the holier-than-thou ideology you see around this topic from time to time, and the negativity directed at this and other developers for daring to suggest that their work might be worthy of some form of compensation. It's total nonsense. It's not about some high-minded "community ideal." People are just being greedy and cheap. How and under what terms someone releases their work is their choice, not yours. The only choice you have is whether or not to partake.
- joshuapants 11y ago
  > How and under what terms someone releases their work is their choice, not yours. The only choice you have is whether or not to partake. And all people are saying is that they won't partake or support if it's not licensed to their satisfaction. There are no license fascists going around breaking windows to make people conform.
  - api 11y ago
    They do it verbally. I'm the author of a number of open source projects, and some of the messages I've received are just insane. The latest thing is... get a load of this... it's now no longer good enough to give your code and your service away for free. Nope. It has to be free and permissively licensed, so that anyone who wants to take it closed and put their name and a price tag on it can do so without compensating you in any way whatsoever. Anything less and you're not serving "the community." I have to ask what kind of community this is. OSS was envisioned as the basis of an information gift economy, not a bunch of "takers." Nowadays the takers are increasingly corporations, not even individuals. That's why my larger non-trivial OSS projects are and will likely remain GPL or similar. I do sometimes release trivial stuff under public domain or nearly-so licenses, but things that take years of work? Sorry, but you have to give something back. At the very least you have to acknowledge its authorship if you use it. Luckily these attitudes are far from the majority, but I still think it's worthwhile to call out obnoxious trash for what it is. I've come to the same opinion with regard to piracy, especially industrial-scale piracy. The thing that really bothers me is when people actually get holier-than-thou about it. I have more respect for you if you just say "look, I'm a cheap greedy jerk and I want free stuff." At least you're admitting it. But please do not try to act like your wanting free stuff is some kind of grandiose liberal social statement that's helping make the world a better place, because it's not. At worst you are helping to devalue labor and destroy peoples' livelihoods. At the very best you are accomplishing nothing. The last thing I want the author of something as beautiful as Space Engine to see is to visit the HN thread about their project and see a bunch of whiny takers berating them about how they're not allowed to take take take on terms that please them sufficiently.
    - joshuapants 11y ago
      > They do it verbally. That's exactly what I said. You're free to ignore them if you think that's best for your project because you're the one in charge.
- harperlee 11y ago
  I find myself sometimes resenting something for not being free. I try to rationalize the real costs of things on the internet, but as they say, for the brain, going from 0€ to 1€ is an infinite raise. And it's hard. The ironic thing about it is that, the more things are free in the web - even crappy versions bloated with ads, with security concerns, with the big question of why should anyone keep fixing things and maintaining free products of services -, the harder it is to find something like this and not think: "Payment? Why should that deserve payment? the other day I saw something else almost completely independent that was free! And I know of at least one thing that is free and it is more valuable to me! It's ridiculous. That guy/gal is nuts, they have an absurd self-esteem. Not worth it.". So what I try to do is appreciate every single thing that I get for free, and try to imagine if I could do it from scratch, and how much of my life I would need to put into it to get what is now free. That helps putting value into something, as even if it is a faulty measure (effort and cost don't drive value), it helps to put consideration of someone else's work on the table, and a little empathy, that so easily is lost on the internet.
- sqeaky 11y ago
  For me open source is a simple matter of practicality. Open source software is freely audit-able and usually free of any kind of trust issue. If something is not open source I simply don't install it on my computer because I must assume the author is trying to hide something. So far this has protected me from the Sony rootkit fiasco and the Sprint/Samsung IQAgent keylogger debacle. All closed source software I use is provide by my workplace on a machine they provide. Or the low level radio driver in my phone :( . OR is installed on a special untrusted machine dedicated to such use.
jug 11y ago
I would also prefer an open source version, but not because he's asking for donations, but because this is just one guy and it wouldn't be a first for him to just disappear for private reasons like family matters, grinding the project to a halt. :( This project feels very fragile and it would be a shame to see it abandoned with everything he's done.

api 11y ago

It's fine to spend $5 on a cup of coffee, but "information wants to be free" even if it's the product of years and years of grueling work. This petulant entitled mentality is vile, especially when it's directed at a free labor of love like this. If people don't like it they shouldn't use it, and nobody is making anyone donate anything. Edit: the thing I'm really responding to here is the holier-than-thou ideology you see around this topic from time to time, and the negativity directed at this and other developers for daring to suggest that their work might be worthy of some form of compensation. It's total nonsense. It's not about some high-minded "community ideal." People are just being greedy and cheap. How and under what terms someone releases their work is their choice, not yours. The only choice you have is whether or not to partake.

joshuapants 11y ago
> How and under what terms someone releases their work is their choice, not yours. The only choice you have is whether or not to partake. And all people are saying is that they won't partake or support if it's not licensed to their satisfaction. There are no license fascists going around breaking windows to make people conform.
- api 11y ago
  They do it verbally. I'm the author of a number of open source projects, and some of the messages I've received are just insane. The latest thing is... get a load of this... it's now no longer good enough to give your code and your service away for free. Nope. It has to be free and permissively licensed, so that anyone who wants to take it closed and put their name and a price tag on it can do so without compensating you in any way whatsoever. Anything less and you're not serving "the community." I have to ask what kind of community this is. OSS was envisioned as the basis of an information gift economy, not a bunch of "takers." Nowadays the takers are increasingly corporations, not even individuals. That's why my larger non-trivial OSS projects are and will likely remain GPL or similar. I do sometimes release trivial stuff under public domain or nearly-so licenses, but things that take years of work? Sorry, but you have to give something back. At the very least you have to acknowledge its authorship if you use it. Luckily these attitudes are far from the majority, but I still think it's worthwhile to call out obnoxious trash for what it is. I've come to the same opinion with regard to piracy, especially industrial-scale piracy. The thing that really bothers me is when people actually get holier-than-thou about it. I have more respect for you if you just say "look, I'm a cheap greedy jerk and I want free stuff." At least you're admitting it. But please do not try to act like your wanting free stuff is some kind of grandiose liberal social statement that's helping make the world a better place, because it's not. At worst you are helping to devalue labor and destroy peoples' livelihoods. At the very best you are accomplishing nothing. The last thing I want the author of something as beautiful as Space Engine to see is to visit the HN thread about their project and see a bunch of whiny takers berating them about how they're not allowed to take take take on terms that please them sufficiently.
  - joshuapants 11y ago
    > They do it verbally. That's exactly what I said. You're free to ignore them if you think that's best for your project because you're the one in charge.
harperlee 11y ago
I find myself sometimes resenting something for not being free. I try to rationalize the real costs of things on the internet, but as they say, for the brain, going from 0€ to 1€ is an infinite raise. And it's hard. The ironic thing about it is that, the more things are free in the web - even crappy versions bloated with ads, with security concerns, with the big question of why should anyone keep fixing things and maintaining free products of services -, the harder it is to find something like this and not think: "Payment? Why should that deserve payment? the other day I saw something else almost completely independent that was free! And I know of at least one thing that is free and it is more valuable to me! It's ridiculous. That guy/gal is nuts, they have an absurd self-esteem. Not worth it.". So what I try to do is appreciate every single thing that I get for free, and try to imagine if I could do it from scratch, and how much of my life I would need to put into it to get what is now free. That helps putting value into something, as even if it is a faulty measure (effort and cost don't drive value), it helps to put consideration of someone else's work on the table, and a little empathy, that so easily is lost on the internet.
sqeaky 11y ago
For me open source is a simple matter of practicality. Open source software is freely audit-able and usually free of any kind of trust issue. If something is not open source I simply don't install it on my computer because I must assume the author is trying to hide something. So far this has protected me from the Sony rootkit fiasco and the Sprint/Samsung IQAgent keylogger debacle. All closed source software I use is provide by my workplace on a machine they provide. Or the low level radio driver in my phone :( . OR is installed on a special untrusted machine dedicated to such use.

jug 11y ago

I would also prefer an open source version, but not because he's asking for donations, but because this is just one guy and it wouldn't be a first for him to just disappear for private reasons like family matters, grinding the project to a halt. :( This project feels very fragile and it would be a shame to see it abandoned with everything he's done.