[varispeed]

Afternoon of a competent developer is a cost of $500-2000. If the subscription is $4.99 a month, in the cheapest scenario you would need 8 years to accrue $500. It's very unlikely that a developer is going to spend 8 years at one company, so spending afternoon on this is a false economy. Unless you want to learn something and perhaps start selling similar product on the side...

[vlovich123]

$2000 seems very expensive for an afternoon unless you’re making $1M/year. The other thing missing from your calculus to consider is that it’s a learning opportunity which offsets the actual time for creating it.

Also, plenty of people have hobbies. That’s why we have OSS.

[varispeed]

$2000 a day is a standard rate for a short term assignment, I know people who charge this much for software development services.

That being said it's more likely you would look at $500.

> The other thing missing from your calculus to consider is that it’s a learning opportunity which offsets the actual time for creating it.

You are also learning while you are being paid for doing it.

> Also, plenty of people have hobbies. That’s why we have OSS.

OSS is being popularised by big corporations because it saves them money on R&D in the long run. Otherwise they would have to pay for a lot of development of projects that would not necessarily be a success within the company. Instead they can pick and choose from projects already "preselected" for them by the community and written by gullible developers who are unlikely going to get even a tiny fraction of money made on their software.

Don't get me wrong OSS is great, but it should be illegal for businesses to use it without paying royalties, otherwise it's just a pure exploitation.

For some reason there is this notion "if it is a someone's hobby then they shouldn't charge money for it". In my country you have to at least pay someone a minimum wage.