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Comment by jrm4 | Hacker News Reader

Now, everyone, think about how much worse the world would be if this was a lauded or primary way to think about "how to make software."

While I appreciate the self-motivation idea generally - this article does nothing for me except make me grateful for free and open source types of folks.

People should mostly just not do this.

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As an iOS developer of 10+ years, it depresses me seeing people happily push out junk like this with a $20 price tag. I'm a bit surprised Apple let it on the store at all, to be honest.

It follows a pattern which Apple actively tries to discourage in its iOS apps, but hasn't quite gotten there for its watchOS ones. The pattern being:

1. Find some useful information online

2. Quickly package it into a basic tableview style app

3. Release for free

4. Use IAP to hide the 'useful' part of your app behind an outrageous price-tag

Seriously, $20 is an absolutely ludicrous price for what should really be a piece of paper. I'm hoping this is Bill's last foray into iOS dev, or at least he does some serious soul searching.

"It currently costs $19.99 for a lifetime purchase, but I’m moving to a subscription, so buy now!"

Jesus wept.

This article made me pretty sad to be honest. This little app made more money in hours than many free software and open source projects do in years.

Well that's not quite fair, it was expressly sold and they weren't.

Well, many open source developers are quite content with making their software freely accessible without expectation of monetary gain. In fact some are strongly opposed to it (see uBlock Origin maintainer). And that’s ok too!

> made more money in hours than many free software

You’re sad that free software didn’t make money ?

If you can't make $40 off an open-source project in years, you are probably deliberately avoiding accepting money.

Probably the weirdest case to study right now is Dwarf Fortress? Did they hit a million yet?

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