[veverkap]

While you're not wrong, I think this undersells a little how much Mitchell has given of his time to OSS. Yes, he's fortunate that he doesn't have to worry about money, but even when he did, he still contributed openly and freely.

That's part of what drew lots of us to HashiCorp in the first place - giving back.

[mindcrash]

It's a little tongue-in-cheek, but as you can see elsewhere in this discussion thread he mentions this himself on his own X account:

"get asked the same about terminals all the time. “How will you turn this into a business? What’s the monetization strategy?” The monetization strategy is that my bank account has 3 commas mate."

https://x.com/mitchellh/status/1964785527741427940

Take a good guess where the three commas come from.

[Geezus_42]

Tres Commas!

[cholantesh]

I didn't think it was possible for anyone to express this thought more obnoxiously than DHH but here we are.

[KPGv2]

The obnoxious one here is the person obsessed with monetization, not the person who throws their ignorance back in their face. Every hobby these days has to be monetized; it's fucking gross.

[cholantesh]

Eh; it's maybe dumb to suggest the only way for a project to be sustainable is to monetize it, but responding with "I'm rich, you peasant, I'm above such concerns" is infinitely worse.

[throwaway2037]

Is DHH (David Heinemeier Hansson) worth 100M USD? Google results say he is worth about 50M USD... so "only" two commas.

[austhrow743]

Three comma club is for billionaires.

[walletdrainer]

I think the bigger thing here is that even with three commas in his bank account he lacks the good sense to not associate with DHH.

[charcircuit]

>The monetization strategy is that my bank account has 3 commas mate."

Having money doesn't mean that you'll have the motivation to continue working on something for free forever.

[lillecarl]

Free work is the most rewarding work on every metric but monetization in my experience, and when you hit road bumps you can pay your way out of it to keep going. Sounds like the literal dream

[KPGv2]

Without turning this into a brag session, this is my experience. I don't have to worry about money anymore, so I get to work on cool projects at my own pace, do things that probably sound pointless to most, and it doesn't matter if it's successful. The important thing is that I'm interested.

I'm not as talented as Mitchell tho.

[charcircuit]

There are a ton of different projects one can devote free work to. Eventually one will get bored and want to change things up.

[bdcravens]

Money begets the freedom to work on causes. Monetization was always a core part of Hashicorp, rather than being a bolt-on after years of OSS. Which is a good thing. (I was a customer of the first commercial offering from Hashicorp, their VMWare add-on for Vagrant)

[notpushkin]

But when you already have money, you can skip the “how can I work on this and not starve to death?” part.