Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

or to rephrase, If your application a valuable is a labor saving or time saving advancement, what is the best model to make sure you can benefit the most from that?

How do you effectively distribute that advancement so that it "rises the tide"? Is a price a valid indicator of value? No, we see these days that free services are much more quickly adopted. Most people judge value by practicality and word of mouth.

If you start extracting value from that service by charging for it, aren't you effectively negating the benefit to society?

Imagine you invented a murder App. (lets call it iMurder) This app replaced the need to murder people, through a complex spanning tree alogirthm that combines social network data and communication and travel restriction protocols (commonly known as SAML) and a fully immersive augmented reality overlay. (compatible with Google Glass)

How much do you charge for this app?




You change the metric of succes. If I wanna the most spread, do it for free. But he is saying about $$$, not reach. So the question remain.


>You change the metric of succes. If I wanna the most spread, do it for free.

Not sure. Linux is free but has less spread than Windows (on the desktop at least).

In the same vain GIMP is free, but more people use Photoshop.

And Ardour is free but has an very small number of users, even compared to $1000 DAWs.

So it can vary.


My badly (un)explained point is that you benefit from free software indirectly, through cheaper software built on top that you later buy or use, or in my extreme example, not being killed because the guy who killed you couldn't run your iMurder app, so you can no longer make money.


You didn't properly grok my comment

what is the best model to make sure you can benefit the most from that?

So, how much are you going to charge for iMurder?

To clarify, do you think you'll make more money in your life giving it away for free or selling it?


If i'm following you, are you saying that the profit could come with ads?




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: