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Posted by nohell 17 hours ago

Write some software, give it away for free(nonogra.ph)
304 points | 209 commentspage 5
tasoeur 10 hours ago|
This is why I'm building free "spite apps" in homage to Larry David's spite stores [0]. The goal being to push back on enshitification of tech and dark patterns like mandatory subscriptions, ads and user data tracking.

As a solo indie-dev, writing free software (as in you don't need to pay anything) is fine, but I usually do not make the project (entirely) open source due to the added churn & maintenance.

In my experience, setting expectations early in my apps ("I'm a solo indie dev", "this is a free app", "you can reach out to me through email but don't expect super quick responses") helped reduce entitled users and - quite the opposite - people were super happy to get replies from me solving their problems.

[0] Blog post about it: https://sxp.studio/blog/spite-apps-the-latte-larrys-of-apps

jonathanstrange 2 hours ago||
Not everyone has that luxury, some people need to earn money. That's why I sell software instead of giving it away for free. It's fine if you want to get everything for free, you're just not one of my customers then.
StilesCrisis 11 hours ago||
https://www.candy-crisis.com/

Enjoy my free, goofy puzzle game

brickstack 11 hours ago|
Ha, thats delightful. The pugcompetitor makes it strangely more compelling to keep playing
sinpif 16 hours ago||
The final three paragraphs really struck a chord with me. Nicely said. Thanks!
deevus 10 hours ago||
I would love to write open source software for a living. So far, I haven't worked out how.
Topology1 16 hours ago||
Wish there was a way to send this to every mobile dev who thinks they can (and should) charge a subscription for their hobby app that provides a basic function
nohell 16 hours ago||
What! You don't want to pay $3.99 a WEEK for a calculator???
dnnddidiej 16 hours ago|||
No. You, so need to hoodwink me into paying it. Better yet hoodwink my kid.
didgetmaster 13 hours ago||||
Answers are free. Correct answers cost extra!
fragmede 15 hours ago|||
What if I only want to use +? Do I get a discount? How about you only charge me when I use = at the end, but not before?
nohell 14 hours ago||
Guess they gotta hit you with the under-utilization "convenience fee" for $1.99? /s
Brian_K_White 16 hours ago|||
Remeber to include the link to your alternate ios app store that you somehow got Apple to allow on everyone's devices, where you don't charge every developer a subscription just to exist. Even Google is 99 44/100 of the way to the same thing.
RIMR 16 hours ago|||
This is something I hope agentic coding helps to solve. It really just takes a few people annoyed enough with this problem to go out and start churning out truly free stuff like this so that the cash-grab apps can die.

I have already written a few tools for myself that I use in my homelab, and I plan to give them away. I've made stuff that, a few years ago, had I developed from the ground up, I would be far more interested in monetizing. But why bother now that I know that anyone with a coding agent can make a copy of it in an afternoon?

komali2 13 hours ago||
I was thinking about this recently. I was gonna try an experiment where I make AGPL apps, release the source code ofc, but then published a 1-5$ version on the Google play store. There's the compiled version if you want, pay a couple bucks. If not, you're free to compile and sideload on your own.

Seems fair enough, similar to self hosted software that offers managed hosting for a price, or you can try to run the docker containers on your own or whatever. I do a bit of both, self host the non critical stuff, pay for the critical stuff.

firesteelrain 15 hours ago||
I don’t need money but I run some moderately successful open source projects. The users are very demanding.
agentifysh 13 hours ago||
i do it here https://github.com/agentify-sh/

but have no idea how to get any compensation

i just do it because i use these tools and like to share it

davidcollantes 14 hours ago||
> Debian-based Linux (Raspberry Pi OS, KDE Neon, Pop_OS, etc. - not Ubuntu)

Why not Ubuntu?

nohell 13 hours ago|
That's outdated, I should update it. It used to be an issue before docker builds and makefile fixes were pushed.
zx8080 14 hours ago|
Hey author, thank you for blocking text selection on your site!

Do you mind describing why?

nohell 14 hours ago||
Text selection should be working. It wasn't blocked. If it's still not working on the non-JS version (click "nojs" in the footer) would you mind making an issue?

Also, you can append .md to the end of any page (except /) to get the markdown from disk as raw text.

sahruum9 14 hours ago||
Text selection is working perfectly fine for me.
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