[bossyTeacher]

Dependency updates, security updates, bug fixes. Yes, if your userbase is in the hundreds of thousands, the one time payments will cover a developer's lifetime of maintenance work. But if you are a random HN dev with a 20-user app, then the 100 dollars, you will not cover a 10 year period of maintenance work, unless your app has zero dependencies and doesn't use any web apis.

Crunchy Bagel is not a random HN dev making a random app. I highly dislike this attitude people have with expecting free work when it comes to software. If the app was sold as it was with 0 additional work of any kind, I bet you wouldn't buy it. You expect free work. But if I ask you to come clean my toilet for free, you wouldn't do it. This is why we have ads on the web nowadays.

[master-lincoln]

But the dev here claimed they created this tool for themselves. If that is the case, why not let everyone else use it for free too if you maintain it for yourself anyway.

I wouldn't answer questions or read feedback then as a dev because it's not a product really, but why not go that route?

[aniforprez]

This is very privileged. Opening an app up for public use is exponentially more effort and the developer deserves to be compensated for it

[master-lincoln]

How is it exponentially more effort if you don't care about what the public has to say about the app? Where is the privilege in my argument?

[bossyTeacher]

It's the difference between having an internal library at work and having an open source library in github. If you are using it for yourself, backwards compatibility, and breaking things are not necessarily issues

[master-lincoln]

> If you are using it for yourself, backwards compatibility, and breaking things are not necessarily issues

It's also not an issue if you publish it. External users might complain, but that is their problem if you make it clear this is a personal project

[pantulis]

> You expect free work.

Now that's a stretch.