STUFF COSTS MONEY

Summary from the TLDR Founders newsletter

Open source software companies keep learning the same lesson. You start by building open source tools for the community, putting everything on GitHub, and promising it'll stay free. You build in public, create Discord channels, and respond to every issue. Then the bills come due - servers, salaries, and the basic costs of existing as a company. So you launch a paid tier, swearing it's just for a tiny fraction of users. Your community gets angry. The whole industry acts surprised when free software eventually costs money, even though software is expensive to build and maintain. Nobody expects free movie tickets just because trailers are free, but somehow charging for software after giving away the core version makes you a sellout.