Probably the same one that Doctorow has used to monetize all his Creative Commons novels. It's jarring that I can freely read every book he's ever written (or at least most of them), but not a short blog post about a laptop.
It's like if Ubuntu's package manager started selling the ability to read reviews of the different packages. Canonical has already built a company around giving away an entire operating system for free.
I read two articles by Doctorow about his decisions about, and involvement around, copyright [0][1]. I didn't pick up on anything relating to how his decision to use CC affects monetization.
So assuming that Doctorow makes a living off of royalties of printed books, as well as speaking engagement fees, I don't think that this model is widely replicable, especially when it comes to currently paywalled content (like from Substack, WSJ, the Economist, NYT, etc), right?
I don't care what strategy they use. However, when a site like HN surfaces content it's a jarring experience when there's content you can't access because of a paywall.
They can keep their paywall and paid content, just get it off HN.
I don't think it's official HN policy to keep paywalled stuff out. And is't it a bit presumptious to assume that everyone on HN would like to avoid paywalled stuff? For example, I appreciate being notified about the existence of high-quality paywalled stuff, even if I don't end up paying to unlock it.
I guess you are not referring to the part where he says he had to look elsewhere than Thinkpads because he couldn't buy one quickly enough, nor the part where he says he decided long ago to gift himself a new laptop every year regardless of his needs.
Surely, you are referring to that part where he says that he always managed to find some poor whom to give the old laptops to.
I don't think this addresses my concern other than superficially though. Charity does not make consumerism sustainable.
