Funding Free Services

The cluster revolves around discussions on the costs of running free tech services, infrastructure, and tools like package managers or HTTPS, questioning who covers expenses such as hosting, power, and salaries, and debating monetization options like user fees or subsidies.

📉 Falling 0.4x Startups & Business
2,925
Comments
20
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#9507
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Activity Over Time

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Keywords

CALEA e.g DB DDC OCLC DLC cost costs pay fees money expenses charging small minority paying lots money

Sample Comments

segmondy Feb 1, 2017 View on HN

Do you pay for it? Maybe they would if people were willing to pay. https costs more resources at scale.

hartator Sep 9, 2017 View on HN

Why not charging prople? If a lot of people use it, you might run off of money.

vaksel Aug 9, 2008 View on HN

Sure it could be done, but who is going to pay for it? At $1/1000 uses you won't even be able to cover your hosting fees.

MuffinFlavored May 13, 2023 View on HN

they have to pay for the power and the staff to set them up/manage it

bunderbunder Feb 29, 2024 View on HN

Doing that well would cost money, and people are used to getting their package managers for free.

samfisher83 Jun 14, 2017 View on HN

You don't think some startup will not take fees? Who is paying for infrastructure and salaries?

randtrain34 Nov 5, 2020 View on HN

Charging for it might hurt adoption a bit

ymolodtsov Feb 18, 2021 View on HN

Seems it'd take significant costs to run it, how do you still manage to do that?

crooked-v Feb 24, 2020 View on HN

While it's an interesting idea, that's a pretty big up-front cost per user.

pishpash May 7, 2018 View on HN

Why isn't everyone installing then? There is a net cost somewhere.