I think it is okay to assume that people who frequent a forum mostly inhabited by people who create software for a living would be okay with software that you would have to pay for.
My comment is not an objection to the existence of software that you have to pay for, nor to this piece of software in particular. But for me, and, clearly, many here, either the Mac-only fact, or the non-free fact, mean that we’re simply not interested, and we’re only informed of these facts after many pages. (The beer facet of free software is the least important part.)
The average income here is several sigmas right of what most people make. Mostly from writing software that isn't being given away for free. It isn't like this is some hippie commune. The vast majority of people here are in software to make money. Hopefully a lot of money.
It isn't the kind of place where acting entitled because you didn't get your free lunch makes you look good. I think it would be a bit more dignified to be thankful when something is free (as in beer or otherwise), but respect that some things aren't. For exactly the same reasons most of us are here: to make a living.
> The average income here is several sigmas right of what most people make.
That's exactly the kinds of elitist bullshit that stinks up the HN comments so often. You have no information at all on the average income here; nor any idea on who all reads/writes on HN. The major difference with reddit is the entitled attitude, not skills/income/intelligence as so many assume.
You act like it is some grave faux pas when developers show us software they are charging money for without labeling it with warnings that it isn't free. I'm sorry, but that's terribly bad form when you are on a forum that largely consists of people making a living writing software.
By labeling people as "elitist" when they point out that this leaves you somewhat wanting in the professional courtesy department you only make my point for me.
Try not to feel so entitled to other people's work.
You completely missed the point the person you're replying to was making (for the second time?)
> But for me, and, clearly, many here, either the Mac-only fact, or the non-free fact, mean that we’re simply not interested, and we’re only informed of these facts after many pages.
I'm really not sure what caused you to 'wax poetic' on the value of good software which I don't think anyone is disputing. But it's totally out of place and honestly quite patronizing.
He simply said that if your product is not free software (ie gpl) or if it's OS-specific, you might as well mention it very soon, and not at the end of a 1000-yard page aka don't be an inconsiderate ass wasting people's time. I don't know what you are going off about.
Problem is, people mostly don't pay for free software. Even if they know how hard it is to make it. The free software we have, we got thanks to corporate charity.
I don't agree. Most of the free software on my desktop was made by individuals who in their spare time. That doesn't mean they don't get paid way too little, so your points still stands, but i object to the "corporate charity" angle. Most corporations take way more than they give back.
Well, there are degrees. All the software I've written within recent memory (last 5-6 years or so) has software that was written by some commercial entity in its dependency graph. Usually as a direct dependency. Of course it varies how expensive it would be for me to replace that software. In some cases I'm sure I could find free alternatives, but it may not be as high quality, performant, correct or convenient to use. Which is another way of saying: it'd cost me more effort.
I can tell myself that I run my software on a free OS, but I know full well that much (if not most) of the heavy lifting on Linux was paid for by companies. Even in cases where the company isn't explicitly credited (as has been the case in several companies I've worked for that had people getting paid to contribute to the Linux kernel).
I'm sure I have written more trivial things in the past 5-6 years that has no external dependencies paid for by companies. Of course, if you ignore that the compiler, standard library, most of the toolchain and the IDE I use to write that software is all being developed by companies.
I bet that if you really were to look at what's between the pixels on your screen and the CPU, you'd probably find that most of the software you think of as written by individuals for free, results in code paths that spend a lot of time in code that was developed on some company's dime.
I'm also interested in what you mean by "most corporations take way more than they give back". Do you mean that monetizing free software is taking something away from free software?
As a thought experiment: imagine that no for-profit company were to use open source software at all. Do you see where I'm going? You do understand that there is a symbiotic relationship here, right?
What OS do you run? I'd like that, but the only thing of this sort that has potential to be as usable as a Linux system is BSD, which doesn't run on my machines.
I hope SerenityOS takes off. It's looking good so far.