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Comment by wavephorm | Hacker News Reader

Anyone who complains about this obviously never was willing to pay enough for the product/service to make it viable -- THEY are the problem, not the site owner. People need to pay for what they like or what is here today might not be here tomorrow. Way too many people have this expectation that everything on the internet must be free.

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People don't do this in the "offline" world. They have gotten used to the free online services, and seem to think that running websites is not a serious business (unless you are Google or Facebook, and even then - "Google search is free, why is your photo app not free?" kind of thinking). As more and more powerful/useful services are given away for free, surviving on ad dollars, people get used to it more and more. Not saying the masses are right - just that website owners should get more comfortable with charging, right from the beginning.

Hmm, what if the creator makes it free, to start with, with the goal of selling/merging it?

The users might feel used.

if you don't pay for a product, you are the product.

I hear this all the time but I don't agree with it. For example, am I "the product" because I don't pay for Ubuntu when I install it on my servers?

Yes, it could be argued.

You're the product because FOSS developers make money almost exclusively through consulting and support. By using Ubuntu you're putting yourself into that pool.

So you could think of Linux distros as a means of producing support customers, and I don't think that's too far removed from reality.

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