Accepting payments? Yikes!
Hi everyone! I'm Travis, I've been a software developer since 2006 and I've worked on a good number of open source projects and side projects. Recently I integrated Stripe for the first time in one of my projects, in order to....*gasp*....charge users and accept payments. The integration was easier than expected, but it still feels kind of slimy to be asking for money for something that was a side project and I just built for fun. On the other hand, I'm using OpenAI credits, so if I actually gave it away totally for free, it would simply cost me more and more money as time went on, especially if it went viral (the dream). So I justify the payments as a scaling/sustainability measure.
Interested to hear others' perspective on this one. Is accepting payments completely shameless? Does it sully the reputation of your project? Necessary evil?
Replies
Hey Travis,
Welcome! I just did my introduction as well and am trying to connect with folks in the community.
My perspective, is you spent your time, mental energy and effort to put something together charging is not only acceptable but necessary. While I don't know all the ends-n-outs of your specific product I do think it's great to try and include a free level of access (not sure if it makes sense for your work).
I'm passionate about the open source community and all the value it's provided, I spent three years at Protocol Labs with the team who built and maintain IPFS and libp2p so it's something I'm close to. Seeing what's happening with the team no longer able to maintain it on their own and no projects willing to step up frustrates me and I think we'll see the impacts of this short sighted decision down the road. That isn't to say the community cant do a great job maintaining it but a lot of passion and institutional knowledge is being handled carlessly.
I say all that to say, charge away, within reason ofc.
Wishing you luck on your journey!
@ebonybelle @catt_marroll
Thanks for the words of encouragement! Great points about the fact that I did put effort into it, and if people are willing to pay (because it brings them value) then I might as well let them! I like the idea of no questions asked refunds too.
I didn't know about the current state of IPFS, that's really a shame. I've always thought it was a great technology, though on the other hand I struggled to find a use case for it. I didn't bother running a node on my home lab because my upstream is so atrocious.
The project I'm talking about with payments is https://www.producthunt.com/products/dada-quest?launch=dada-quest.
My "main" side project is https://rainfall.dev which is a tool to help musicians build static sites for their music.
@audiodude this looks cool! Great work, definitely worth a contribution for sure.
@ebonybelle Thanks so much! :blush:
My Financé
i have deff struggled with this and it adds some anxiety to my day to day knowing someone might pay for software that isn't perfect or is buggy.
i ultimately decided:
i would give anyone a refund if they asked, pretty much without dispute.
if my product is providing someone value then them paying for it makes sense -- i shouldnt really feel bad that i built something over a bar that someone was willing to pay for it.
if the only reason people are using my tool is that it's free, and any expectation of collecting payment would ruin my reputation in their eyes, then i consider that pretty unreasonable. it feels like: "i want you to do work, i want to use said work, and im insulted you would ask me to pay for it". i think open source is amazing! but nonetheless, it doesnt mean that everything should be free.
my 2C at least. and i put my "money" where my mouth is with my personal finance tool. I let people use the tool for 7 days, then ask for payment.
My Financé
also welcome BTW @audiodude . share a link to what your are working on so we can check it out!
See reply I mentioned you in above!