robalni

First, AI is not just a tool like other tools. It's much more random and complex, which makes it very different from other tools.

You can't simply say that it's useful. How useful it is depends on what you are trying to do. If you are making some software that you need to understand well and be responsible for, then I think AI could make that harder, because it doesn't force you to think through and understand everything, and having to do that probably makes it just as fast to write it by hand anyway.

Don't forget that part about understanding and being responsible. It's important. Even if AI got 100000x better, understanding and being responsible would still take about the same amount of time, because it has to be a very manual process, and it taking time is part of the point of it. Also, while a computer can't take responsibility, a human has to do it, so using AI could easily reduce the responsibility taken by the human without increasing it anywhere else.

Expect is not what I do but I fight for it.

I don't like treating people like numbers. 98% isn't much and it isn't little. It's just wrong.

If I'm one of the 2% then that's everything for me. Maybe I have good reasons to be in the 2%. And maybe, not caring about that is wrong.

I would rather have a website that only works for 2% of people for the right reason, than a website that doesn't work for 2% for the wrong reason.

This is not just a question of browser age.

I use a browser that had its last release less than a year ago. It doesn't do CSS, it doesn't do javascript and I love it. I also love to be able to use the websites I need.

Just a general rule of thumb:

If I am not able to use any digital service or product on a computer that I could have built entirely myself (or had anyone of my choice build for me), running code I could have written entirely myself (or had anyone of my choice write for me), then that is completely unacceptable.

Sorry for nitpicking, maybe you didn't think through the choice of word, but what is a "technical" argument and how is it different from other types of arguments?

I think all arguments about a technology like systemd need to have a technical part (what systemd does) and a (sometimes implicit) personal part (what I think about it). If it doesn't have the technical part then I don't think it's an argument about systemd at all.

The difference I can see between your example arguments is that the "technical" one is more precise. "Not supporting x" is pretty specific while "being bloated" is not very precise. But of course it could be more precise if you say something like "systemd is made of x megabytes of code. I only want the code I need which I think can be implemented in 1% of that" or just "systemd includes parts x, y and z which I don't want".

So did you by "technical" just mean "precise" or is there another meaning that I missed?

It's time we change the economy for digital products and services.

* The current economy is bad: The company that can require or lure the most money from people wins.

* This would be better: The company that is liked by most people wins.

That one change would solve sooo many problems. We could get rid of a lot of laws that wouldn't be needed any more.

After reading a few answers I still feel like I haven't seen an intuitive answer to the question: why does it take so much more energy to go from 1 to 2 than from 0 to 1?

I have been thinking about it and only been able to come up with something that feels intuitive but not at all precise and I don't know how correct.

When you stand still you may use your surroundings to gain some speed, like by pushing against a wall.

When you have speed it gets harder to gain more speed because the surroundings are (relative to you) moving in the wrong direction, so for every additional unit of speed, it takes more effort to get there.

It might be a good thing that companies kill games, actually.

I want Non-free Software to suck as much as possible to give people more reasons to use Free/Open-source Software, which can't be killed.

Me too with w3m.

Wow, look at the page source! It's an insane amount of javascript. I wonder what it does.

Do you think it makes a difference to replace the AI with another human then?

If I have an original idea and ask you to do the work, should I get copyright?

I just started building an operating system that will be written entirely in one text file. This text file includes in order: a readme, a RISC-V assembly boot code, then the rest. You run it by compiling the initial boot code with a RISC-V assembler, then you concatenate the binary with the whole text file itself. Then when you run it, the boot code will compile the rest of the text file (the operating system), including higher level language compilers that the rest of the system will be written in.

This is the kind of project that creates something from as little as possible, where the only things you need to get started are a very basic RISC-V assembler and a computer or emulator to run it on.

I don't have anything interesting to show yet because I just started yesterday, but one day I will show you.

I feel like the only protection against AI in general, not just for tickets, is trust. If I trust you, you can do whatever you want as long as I trust you. If I don't trust you, you can do whatever you want; I will just block or ignore everything you do.

It's when we try to interact with random people that we get problems. Doing that will become less and less possible the more AI grows. We will have a future where trust is very important.

I just publicly released the first version of my web+email+database combined server package that I have been using myself for a while now for all the different server based projects I have been working on.

https://www.robalni.org/server/

I try to keep it as small and simple as possible while still being flexible and containing everything in one package that you need to write server applications. It also has no dependencies except for very common stuff like a standard C library and a Unix-like operating system.

So are you then implicitly setting the price yourself because anyone who doesn't charge enough can't get more credits?

Everyone can get more credits. The idea is that when we think we need more subscriptions to sell, every developer would get a number of additional credits that is proportional to the number of credits they have (with active subscriptions converted to credits for the calculation).

But to do that you'd have to let them sell a hundred million subscriptions for $0.01 each.

That would be very difficult for them to do since the number of subscirptions they can sell is limited by how many credits they have.

Some app which is specialized and requires a million dollars of developer time but only has a market of 10,000 customers.

If you make software for only a few people and you need a lot of money then I don't think this system is for you. It is mostly for developers who make software for everybody.

- What do you expect open source developers to charge at minimum for access to the catalog in order to make this make sense to do at all?

If people subscribe once and access everything, it seems like they'd need to charge a lot to make it a worthwhile co-op to participate in.

I have thought about this a bit and yes, when this thing grows, the subscriptions will be worth more and more. I haven't really done any calculations though because it's really hard to know what things will be like. Anyway, let's try one:

Let's say there are 100 developers (individuals) and a developer wants $4000 per month. Then if we want a subscription to be $5 per month or maybe we could allow it to be $10, the number of subscribers per developer would have to be 100 * 4000 / 10 / 100 or just 4000/10 = 400. So I guess as long as the number of subscribers are a few hundreds times more than the number of developers (individuals), it could work.

- How does this handle the scenario of a developer disappearing?

Interesting question; I have not thought about that. Developers register and unregister the subscriptions so hopefully they would unregister their subscriptions before they disappear. If they don't do that, it could be forced by the system but there would have to be rules about that then so everybody knows what will happen.

Does the developer have the ability to remove access to the catalog from specific subscribers?

Yes, they can register and unregister subscriptions as much as they want.

If the developers have the ability to remove subscribers at will, doesn't this disincentivize paying at all because paying gives you no security in your access you just bought? What is your plan to arbitrate this without access to primary payment information to confirm who is right?

That is between the buyer and the seller. If you buy something and you don't get what you bought, you would try to solve that with the seller. Of cource people can complain to 1Sub too and then maybe the other developers will lose trust in that developer and they can be kicked out.

- It seems like although decentralized, this approximates to the journal model but for code? Is this your intention?

I have not thought much about the journal model but I can see how this is similar. My main vision has been tax that everyone who wants to be a citizen pays so that they then can enjoy things that are not sold directly to people.

I mean that's the literal point of this website, no? In the real world, a sale is a sale. Imagine going into BestBuy, leaving $100 at the front, telling the clerk to put it all into Sony (because Sony is 4 cool kidz) and then just grabbing a nVidia graphics card and Apple AirPods.

Ok, I see what you mean now. I think the distribution of who gets the money in 1Sub would be similar to donations, with two remedies:

- The owner of the paywall that made you subscribe gets a 10 credits bonus as described in [0]. This will lead to more money to the people who make the things that you actually try to use.

- If someone is popular, they will either run out of subscriptions to sell, or they will sell them at a higher price. In either case that makes it possible for the less known developers to sell more subscriptions.

[0] https://1sub.dev/about/how-it-works

offers an alternative that... solves absolutely none of these problems.

Here is how 1sub solves or remedies the problems with the mentioned methods:

- Pay to download or for other services: With 1sub it will be more worth it because you don't just get access to that software or that service, you get access to the software and services of all developers who participate in this system.

- Accepting donations: While 1sub keeps some of the voluntary aspect of donations, you also get something for your money.

folks can still pirate it

Yes, the point of this is not to make it impossible to do anything without a subscription. It just makes the difference in convenience between subscribing and not subscribing bigger since there are more things that you get or don't get depending on whether you subscribe.

this effort sounds like some naive newbie took 5 seconds to think about

Interestingly I have thought about this for many years and no idea I have had before or any solution I have seen has felt as good as this one because they always fail in that the user doesn't have enough reason to pay. The main objective of this solution is to give the user more reason to pay.

By "people" are you excluding organizations such as governments, corporations etc?

If you mean "people" as in "A world where people pay for software", then no.

I think companies, especially software companies, would like to subscribe in this system if it gets big because if they have dependencies that require subscriptions, they probably don't want anything to get in the way for their employees.

If I'm a developer and get to chose what to charge, that means I can ask people for $0.01, and they would get access to everything from all developers of this "platform"?

You can do that but you will not make a lot of money that way. The number of subscriptions you can sell is limited so if you sell all of them for $0.01 you will probably wish you had asked for more and when you have sold out, only the more expensive subscriptions sold by other developers remain and they will make more money than you.

The example on [0] where a developer pays credits when they get a subscriber is confusing. Should Devs "top up" somehow?

I don't know exactly what you mean by "top up" but the credits are turned into subscriptions when sold. This is how we make sure the developers can't sell infinite subscriptions. The plan is then that with time, the developers will get more credits so that they can sell more subscriptions. How fast they will get more could depend on the current value of their account, where the value could be calculated from the credits and the number of subscribers they have.

What if the person does make decent software, but is a huge influencer?

Then they would probably be able to make more money selling subscriptions than other developers that are less known. I don't know how different that would be though from if they sold physical products. One important thing here is that there is a limit to how many subscriptions one developer can sell. This is done to emulate physical products as much as possible.

Also, they would probably sell the subscriptions for a higher price than other developers, since they can, which would mean that people who don't know about that person would buy from someone who is cheaper.

Why not opt for the Spotify model? Usage = money. Why turn this into a popularity contest?

That means there has to be usage statistics collection in all software. Since the software has to be open source, that could be abused a lot, including removed. I also don't like the idea of having any requirement like that on the software. It would for example require that the software has access to the internet which doesn't work well for some software.

So someone can subscribe to a 0.99/month product and use several 19.99/month products?

Yes, a developer can sell the subscriptions for very cheap but then they will probably quickly run out of subscriptions (there is a limited number) and then wish they had sold them for more.

Also, the subscription is not really tied to any product; think of it more as a subscription to free software in general, that can be sold by different resellers (the developers).

Oh, I don't remember the website mentioning this. How does this work, and what are the implications?

You can read about it here (bottom): https://1sub.dev/about/how-it-works

It means that there is a supply/demand that influences what price the subscriptions can be sold for. Developers have a limited number of "credits" that can be turned into subscriptions. They can get more credits by making people subscribe through their links. There is also a plan that the credits will be multiplied and grow with time in order to keep the prices on a sane level.

But I don't get any $ from it unless they sign up on MY site, right? Since there's no sharing mechanism.

Exactly.

So I don't see how joining in would benefit me - if anything I'd lose a bit of revenue from people who would have paid and now find they don't need to because they're signed up for some other product which I have no hand in and no revenue from?

It would not benefit you if the average person paid for multiple free software projects. In that case, they would only have to pay for one instead of multiple.

I don't think that's the case though, so this solution should make more people pay for free software and that should benefit the developers on average.

I'm very confused about how the distributed payment system would work. How much would a subscription cost for a user and how much would a developer see of that?

Developers could sell subscriptions for any price they want. They have a limited number of subscriptions they can sell so there is a supply/demand that influences the price. Users buy directly from the developers so they would get 100% of the money (minus possible transaction fees depending on payment method).

If you could give examples of the alternatives that you think don't work then it might be helpful to see how your service differs from those.

The alternatives are mainly the ones listed on the page above: buying things from developers in the usual way and donating. There are also other systems that work in a more centralized way where you pay the system that then distributes the money to the creators and this system differs from all of those in that it doesn't handle any money.

If you want an example, there is liberapay.com that seems to be donations with centralized payments. My system tries to be better than that because:

- Payments are less voluntary because you get access to stuff when you pay.

- Payments are decentralized so there can be more freedom of choice in how you pay.

where someone pays a single subscription and gets access to all content providers on the platform (in this case content is software), where creators get a proportion of the subscription fee

It is like that, except that users buy the subscriptions directly from the developers. 1Sub doesn't handle any money. This also means that the developers get 100% of the money (except for any transaction fees depending on payment method).

I know that is a possible problem. Partially, that problem exists with everything; advertisements make people buy from the most popular brands even if they are not the best. Other than that, the developers in this cooperation have to trust each other so if someone is just popular and doesn't make any good software, they would not be accepted by the other developers to join.

What you get access to is everything that is protected using this site. Anyone can create paywalls. Here is an example of a link that only lets subscribers view this comments page:

    https://1sub.dev/link?u=https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id%3D&s=p_GonuAYEe0&k=&n=hK5ZOXymlHi5s2Es&a=a.18

The difference this is supposed to make is that currently most people don't pay for free software. I don't for example. That is because I don't need to. This system is supposed to make more people pay, which should mean that all developers get more money. Giving access to someone who subscribes to someone else is part of what makes this work and if the developers can accept that, they should all benefit from it.

Why would developers use this over just asking for money?

More people should want to pay if they use this system because if you just ask for money, you either don't give anything in return (donations) or you give access to your stuff, but with this system, the user gets access to everything that uses this system.

What are you going to do about people asking for 1 cent to join the network?

Developers can sell subscriptions for 1 cent but since they have a limited number of subscriptions to sell, they will not make a lot of money that way.

If you mean 1 cent to join as a developer, that is free; it's about trust. This should be a cooperation between developers who trust each other.