I'm signed up for future notices. Think of it like a book about Clojure and some of its libraries on a web site, except it is more index than prose. People seem to give books a chance quite often, if they are informative enough. (Chas, feel free to use an analogy like that on the web site. That and "for the price of only 6 medium lattes, you get ...")
Yes, I understand your point that books are usually evaluated differently than web sites. "There is a culture of free as in free beer on the net, that will result in most not giving it a chance". If a person doesn't give it a chance because of that culture, and they would get more than $20 of benefit from paying for it (a free sample making this easier to judge), the ideas they have accepted from that culture should be given more careful thought. If people judge whether it is worth paying for sources of information solely by the form in which they are delivered, it reminds me of a popular saying about books and their covers. I could easily imagine Chas creating something more useful than existing web sites currently are, in a relatively short amount of time (i.e. weeks), if he is interested in focusing on it. Andy On Apr 19, 2011, at 10:49 AM, rob levy wrote: > Again, it's not that *I* wouldn't pay, it just seems unfortunate that most > people won't get to use it. Whether right or misguided, there is a culture > of free as in free beer on the net, that will result in most not giving it a > chance. A separate but related issue is the advantage of free as in freedom; > if designed for collaborative content development, that would make the > service more actively used and free of errors, and more scalable to include > models of other libraries, with library developers using the tool to model > their own new libraries. > > On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 1:39 PM, Chas Emerick <cemer...@snowtide.com> wrote: > > On Apr 19, 2011, at 1:10 PM, rob levy wrote: > > > This seems great. The $20 bothers me, not because I don't want to pay it, > > I would gladly donate this meager amount for such a useful resource. > > There's just something in poor taste about not making this open to > > everyone. And there's an implicit camaraderie and good will that developer > > communities have come to expect that makes this paywall seem weird and > > unwelcoming. If you framed this as a donation, with access not contingent > > on donation, it would be perfectly fine-- and people might actually use it. > > If people feel that the work is worthwhile, they'll pay, if not, they won't. > I suspect that I'll end up sinking about a full man-month into the ontology > when all is said and done (with incremental improvements as later versions of > Clojure are released, etc) so I don't feel badly about charging real money > for that, and being honest and direct about the nature of the transaction. > Nevermind the effort around the UX, etc. > > Really, I'd wish more developers would charge reasonable amounts for tools > that they work on for free in their spare time; perhaps more of them would > work on them full-time, and we'd have better tools! > > Anyway, it's just a preview site at the moment -- there's no "paywall" > anywhere. > > - Chas > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Clojure" group. > To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com > Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your > first post. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Clojure" group. > To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com > Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your > first post. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
