[wolframhempel]

Aside from duplication there's also competition. If you bake for your family, your pie will be appreciated, regardless of its novelty. But if your pie is meant to go onto a supermarket shelf alongside other pies, you need to give the consumer an incentive to choose yours - by making it better and/or different.

[shprd]

Yeah, the main difference is software is accessible online so it's competing on a worldwide stage. This make people feel there's an abundance of software and they get picky.

This is totally fine from economic perspective. But when it comes to side projects that aren't selling to consumers, there's no reason to bring down someone if you see no value in their work. Especially when they're sharing it for free with no expectations, like most software side projects we see here hosted on GitHub.

Look at many show HN, someone sharing their little fun project, then you've some entitled users asking

  What does this offer over this product of fortune 500 company? Why should I use it?

Often the side project still have some advantage but do these people realize how ridiculous and entitled they sound? The author shared a fun project for free, they're not asking for a billion $ investment.

[layer8]

> Especially when they're sharing it for free with no expectations

I doubt that most creators sharing their work as a Show HN have no expectations.

[shprd]

What are the expectations? Considering i'm specifically talking about free software often hosted on GitHub?

[layer8]

What do you think motivates people to submit a Show HN? Typically they expect to get something out of it that they don’t get by their project just sitting on GitHub.

[shprd]

I don't know about you but I'm speaking from experience, not hypothetically. I shared multiple open source side projects where I made something for myself then shared it with the world.

> Typically they expect to get something out of it that they don’t get by their project just sitting on GitHub.

Can you expand? the vast majority of open source projects don't make a dime. I don't see the ulterior motive you're talking about. Unless you mean like they get more GitHub stars?

[layer8]

What motivated you to share them? What outcome did you expect?

I’m not talking about revenue. I’m talking about the fact that sharing their creation usually comes with expectations of some (at least psychological) benefit for the sharer. For example, some people want to receive praise for the project. Or they may want to attract collaborators. Still others actually do seek criticism in order to potentially improve the work.

Therefore, “sharing without expectations” doesn’t seem a likely occurrence in that context. People do have expectations, if only unconsciously, and others react with the understanding of such expectations being present.

[KolmogorovComp]

clout

[ClumsyPilot]

> Typically they expect to get something out of it that

Where do I begin ?

Satisfaction, narcissism, sense of self-worth, approval, love they never got from their parents…

[ClumsyPilot]

> What does this offer over this product of fortune 500 company? Why should I use it?

It’s worse, “what does it offer for a Fortune 500 company”