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Comment by smeyer | Hacker News Reader

Your comment is an interesting reflection to me of the expectations people have for cheap or free software. You were willing to invest your time and schedule into seeing this talk live, which for many people is a much larger investment than $10. My default assumption of folks on this board is that they're well-off tech workers, which would make it seem even starker in comparison to $10.

My comment isn't anything about you personally, and I've had similar reactions to even cheaper software. But it still find it striking when I think about it more.

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I like the feeling of hanging out with likeminded people or friends and showing each other the cool stuff we're working on. Asking for (or receiving!) even nominal amounts of money makes it a completely different kind of interaction and puts me in a completely different mindstate.

In my experience, doing the math on monetary value of time spent on random activities or interactions just makes everybody sad and doesn't lead to better decisionmaking.

Except that the various pieces aren't actually free, so it relies on people being rich enough, or things being cheap enough, to not worry about the costs, but someone's paying money. Being realistic and sharing the costs is better than pretending they don't exist.

> My default assumption of folks on this board is that they're well-off tech workers

My family is well above the median household income in my state and my county (maybe almost 2x the median), yet due to horrible timing awards, the median house payment would put as at 40% of gross pay, or 62% of take home pay.

No one is well off right now.

I wonder if it is about the $ value at all on some of these threads. If it's not offered for free, and open, then you're just a capitalist pig trying to make money off of software. The gall and gumption people would have to try to earn money off their labor banging code. At least, read enough threads, and that's the sentiment the can come across.

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