Why Lichess will always be free
https://lichess.org/blog/YF-ZORQAACAA89PI/why-lichess-will-always-be-free.
hydroxideOH- · 5 years ago
59 comments
https://lichess.org/blog/YF-ZORQAACAA89PI/why-lichess-will-always-be-free.
hydroxideOH- · 5 years ago
59 comments
rektide · 5 years ago
Damn liches, we just can't stop em.
throwanem · 5 years ago
Out of nowhere, but I tried out k3s today and so far it's good as hell. Thanks again for the recommendation!
sethbannon · 5 years ago
Lichess is such an inspiring demonstration of what talented enthusiasts can build, even when driven not by profit but by simple passion. You can feel the craftsmanship and the love of chess in the app and in the speed of iteration. We could use more of this in the world.
usgroup · 5 years ago
lichess is by far the finest piece of complex online software I’ve ever used. Desktop or mobile it works perfectly. There is no Silicon Valley, Spartan hiring processes, elite University filters: just open source contribution and a great quality gate.
It’s also a great example of something born of and sustained by a community: a testament to the chess demography.
neatze · 5 years ago
I wonder, if lichess used UML/SysML diagram(s) sometime in long past.
beberlei · 5 years ago
This is going to sting but an early version was built on PHP and Symfony framework :)
lmm · 5 years ago
Interesting, nowadays they're known as one of the big open-source Scala products.
beberlei · 5 years ago
yes, I believe it was at a hackathon in 2010/2011 when during an off-topic discussion with Thibault he mentioned moving to Scala. So very long time ago :)
pull_my_finger · 5 years ago
> There is absolutely nothing positive about advertisements on websites from the perspective of their users. They eat up valuable screen space and bandwidth for something that nobody wants to see. They often manipulate and misinform. They have even been the source of security vulnerabilities many times in the past.
While I share the loathing of modern Ads as a service or whatever the technical name for giving Google/Ad Choices a blank check to serve whatever they want on a piece of your web real estate, I think you can certainly put up a banner or something responsibly. If I run a web dev blog and I put a banner for my VPS that has a my referral code, or I come to an agreement with said VPS to show an ad for guaranteed credit or I just sell the space directly to XYZ company that is relevant to my users I think that is a legit way to get a little income without burdening my users.
If Lichess decided to promote some chess books or software on their page to supplement their donations, I would be OK with that as long as it's done tastefully and responsibly.
DorianSinDeep · 5 years ago
While its good that you're willing to compromise in a reasonable manner, I don't think it has particular relevance to the point that advertisements in any form are most likely to be about something you won't go looking for yourself. There are even some companies with no advertisement spending because their product is so essentially useful that people will seek it out themselves.
aaronbrethorst · 5 years ago
This is a nice, albeit reductive hypothesis.
Literally the last thing I did before posting this comment was email a link to a Facebook in-app ad’s advertised product to myself because I wanted to look at it in more detail tomorrow.
I wasn’t looking for the product it was advertising, but I see how it could be extremely useful for me if it works.
foerbert · 5 years ago
The post qualified that position with an exceptionally mild "most likely." A single counterexample is hardly a reason to criticize it as reductive.
Unless you do this with the majority of the ads you see, and you believe this is a common experience for most people?
DivisionSol · 5 years ago
Some advertisements are malicious attacks on your attention to build brand recognition and entice you to buy things you don't need.
However, I think advertising in itself isn't inherently evil. If a chess website served non-tracking, static (no-JS) banner ads about relevant products (maybe, specifically, chess products?) to offset costs, I don't see anything wrong with it. Of course the question is: "what is a relevant product to advertise next to chess?" Would... other board game advertisements be acceptable?
komali2 · 5 years ago
Sure but they wouldn't do that, as it doesn't seem to be something that would further their stated goal:
> to promote and encourage the teaching and practice of the game of chess and its variants".
lame-robot-hoax · 5 years ago
I’d argue ads for chess sets actually would do exactly that.
tovej · 5 years ago
Chess books, maybe. Chess sets? I'm sure most people playing chess on lichess are aware of chess sets and could get a hold of one without an ad.
mpol · 5 years ago
And in the case of chess books, an advertorial is quite different from a good review. I very much enjoy reading a good review on a chess book, with all the good things and bad things. With an advertorial the language is quite different and it is very hard to get informed well about what you really get when you buy the book. With honest critique, I very much enjoy reading about the bad parts, and if they are not bad for me, or just a nuance, it might be a really good book for me. Only an honest review can give me that.
So no, an advertorial for a book does not do anything for me.
why_Mr_Anderson · 5 years ago
That's exactly how Google ads worked in the very beginning. Text only, all in one place, it was great! If we could somehow return that type of ads, I'd consider disabling adblocker.
ZephyrBlu · 5 years ago
This is basically saying that "build it and they will come" works, but we know that's a fallacy.
op03 · 5 years ago
Wikipedia, Linux, Blender, Firefox are all what?
Lvl999Noob · 5 years ago
This might be survivorship bias talking. I do not have any examples with me but I am quite sure, there are a lot more projects that ended up dead.
op03 · 5 years ago
They are not Ad based models proving non ad based models exist and work especially in the domain of free rider/collective action problems.
paxys · 5 years ago
Most projects end up dead, ad supported or not. I don't think that's an argument one way or another.
ZephyrBlu · 5 years ago
I would call them the exceptions that prove the rule.
auggierose · 5 years ago
Kind of like special relativity is an exception to Newtonian mechanics?
It's good to know the rules, but you shouldn't live your life by them.
fnord123 · 5 years ago
That's not what that means.
It means a sign saying "no blue cars" is the exception proving the rule that non-blue cars are allowed.
tonyedgecombe · 5 years ago
Didn't Linus make an announcement on Usenet when he started the project. A form of advertising.
sokoloff · 5 years ago
I could have sworn I’ve seen ads for Firefox. I know I’ve seen ads in Firefox, some placed by Mozilla, but I could have sworn I’ve seen ads for Firefox not in Firefox. (This is nearly impossible to Google for due to all the hits for ad-blockers.)
Mozilla spends 10s of millions every year on “advertising and promotion” per their financial statements, though they have other things to advertise about than just Firefox.
curun1r · 5 years ago
I could see an argument that ads for specific, chess-related products like Chessable courses would be welcome on Lichess, perhaps even as an opt-in so users can choose to support the site. I know Chessable is constantly introducing new courses and I don't always remember to check regularly. A banner that tells me of a new course I'm interested in would solve that. For me, at least, but I doubt I'm the only one.
I wish more sites would do ads without using ad networks. Communities like the chess world are small enough that all the providers know each other and could probably work together in a way that benefits everyone, including users.
heroku · 5 years ago
Chessable is a poorly executed idea, with an awful user experience.
maccard · 5 years ago
> There are even some companies with no advertisement spending because their product is so essentially useful that people will seek it out themselves
Really? I'd love to hear more about this.
ZWoz · 5 years ago
I am not sure, what parent thought and I don't have examples without any spending to advertisement, but there is very "low profile", almost no ads categories. 1) Big business-to-business manufacturers. I haven't ever seen ads for compal or asml. I am sure they are presented in trade shows and contact directly to potential customers. 2) Small data recovery shops. I know few those, one don't advertise at all, one uses only google ads (and only few keywords, not big budget).
maccard · 5 years ago
The parent's claim is:
> There are even some companies with no advertisement spending because their product is so essentially useful that people will seek it out themselves.
and that's in response to someone suggesting low profile/almost-no-ads. I completely agree about the low-profile/almost-no-ad approach (in the tech world having a community that evangalises for you is an advertisers wet dream, for example!), and I think that's what a lot of people in this thread are calling for. On a chess website, have ads for chess books/chess boards/novice-to-grandmaster streams, that sort of stuff, rather than shoving an ad for an Amazon mattress at the bottom of a blog post on Continuous Integration!
shard · 5 years ago
No-ad-spend companies are hard to come up with, some possibilities are everyday necessities with very few competitors like salt (but I think they advertise a little), or utility monopolies (I don't think my local water company or garbage collection company advertises, but I haven't checked. Maybe they advertise to the government offices that select the companies to use?). Pre-internet days, it would be easier to be sure some businesses don't advertise (neighborhood convenience stores or laundromats, for example, that get enough foot traffic to not bother advertising), but with the ease of throwing up a website nowadays (which should count as advertising), this can no longer be assumed.
Scarblac · 5 years ago
Did you see an ad for Hacker News?
I'm writing in a paper notepad right now, found a web shop selling it by a normal Google result after describing what I was looking for, not an ad.
The pens I always buy I first bought in a stationary store, ended up liking them and now I always buy that brand.
Farmers sell their produce to supermarkets probably without having to advertize for them, and I go to the particularly supermarket I go to because it's closest to where I live.
Lots of things we use on a daily basis we never saw ads for, and yet they're sold to us by companies. Somehow.
maccard · 5 years ago
> Did you see an ad for Hacker News?
hacker news is heavily affiliated with ycombinator - and I can almost guarantee that I've seen ads/puff pieces for ycombinator over the last decade.
> The pens I always buy I first bought in a stationary store, ended up liking them and now I always buy that brand.
Just because you purchased a product without seeing an ad for it doesn't mean that that company doesn't have an ad spend. How did they get to that stationery store in the first place?
> Farmers sell their produce to supermarkets probably without having to advertize for them
Farmers likely work with a coop style organisation (who _do_ advertise heavily), or maybe have some local link. That local link is generated by having a presence in local business forums, farmers markets, local stores. Back in the day, your local butcher or greengrocer would take out full page ad in your town's newspaper to show the special offers they have on this week, nowadays I get facebook ads for my butcher.
> Lots of things we use on a daily basis we never saw ads for, and yet they're sold to us by companies. Somehow.
That's a strawman; the original claim was that there are companies with no advertising, not that people buy products without seeing advertising for them.
blueblimp · 5 years ago
Tesla doesn’t run ads, as far as I know.
maccard · 5 years ago
I had a look and it seems to be true! Thank you!
_That said_, their "Discover" range of videos on youtube sure look like ads (albeit not banner ads). I know that Tesla have had a presence at a bunch of EV events here in Scotland; they have a stall and cars there that you can test drive. It's definitely not banner-ad-on-google, (and the publicity from stating they don't do ads is likely an ad in itself), but it's definitely "paid marketing"
Super interesting though, thank you for giving me a rabbit hole to go down!
csbartus · 5 years ago
> If Lichess decided to promote some chess books or software on their page to supplement their donations,
Why more? If donations are enough why ads?
"Advertising is the way we grant power to the machine" - said Samuel Butler in Erewhon (1872).
I'm thinking a lot about the nature of advertising. I guess, after all, it sells excess, stuff which shouldn't exist. It propels low quality, overproduction, unlimited and unnecessary growth. The pain-points of this current era.
Just take a look at our / tech / programming sector. We are well done without ads. I've never seen a Clojure or a CSS ad in my life, nor Atom, nor Linux. Nor Gmail, nor TakeShape, nor Vercel and the list is endless. Yet still using them and happy with them. And they are happy with me.
No ads work. In change, this market requires educated participants, not just blind consumers.
jhrmnn · 5 years ago
The reason I’ve felt a strong distaste for ads since being a teenager is that ultimately they rob me of, or try to mess with, my free choice
blowski · 5 years ago
Almost all human interaction is in some way trying to persuade you to choose something that you might otherwise not. When I ask my wife "Shall we play a board game?" I'm in some way doing the same thing. That's not evil.
Advertising is not inherently evil.
When it becomes evil is when it intentionally tries to deceive us, capture and processe insane amounts of information about us, and influence the display of information for its own ends. If I did that to my wife, it wouldn't be OK.
MauranKilom · 5 years ago
Right, but the game theory there is pretty obvious: The better an ad is at "hacking" your mind and exploiting human characteristics, the more money it makes. Which naturally leads to this insane spiral of increasingly manipulative and insidious ads.
If your single purpose in life was to play board games with your wife, you would probably also observe these tendencies in your questions.
skinkestek · 5 years ago
> The better an ad is at "hacking" your mind and exploiting human characteristics, the more money it makes.
The same can be said about any negotiation or even any interaction, can't it? Yet there are some people and some companies you like and some that you don't like.
I've been a customer liaison at a place where the customer actively went out of their way to see our sales guy; yes, it cost them money but he'd get them a better deal the they could on their own or with any other vendor they knew. He'd actively reduce his sale if possible without even mentioning but the customer had been with us for years and had noticed the pattern.
There's no reason why ads aren't a spectrum as well:
I see nothing wrong with a link to "this is the gear that I use" on a clearly marked page as long as they actually use it.
Or a couple of books. ("You must read these 30 books to be a successful <x>" is of course another thing entirely.)
fnord123 · 5 years ago
>When it becomes evil is when it intentionally tries to deceive us, capture and processe insane amounts of information about us, and influence the display of information for its own ends. If I did that to my wife, it wouldn't be OK.
No single snowflake is responsible for the avalanche. Even if a single ad is not inherently evil, in aggregate they have become a problem.
blowski · 5 years ago
To stretch your analogy:
1. Not all snowflakes become avalanches.
2. If we didn't have snowflakes, we wouldn't have snow, and that would cause huge problems as well.
johannes1234321 · 5 years ago
> Advertising is not inherently evil.
Evil isn't an objective measure. However ads want to get some attention away from the content I care about to the ad.
One can argue that the "classic" Google ad, where I search for a pan and Google showing me ads for shops selling pans serves my request, at the same time I can argue that I was looking for a somewhat objective (while that's a lie - the algorithm showing search results has some biases) listing, while I get the one paying most.
In my judgment the ad is bad, but the attention it drags is my payment for the information.
runarberg · 5 years ago
i remember a few years back when online-go.com (OGS) decided to double down on ads in order to fund new servers to speed up the service outside of North America[1]. They opted to not just place ads in the landing page, but to also display ads in the game page. It was a huge disaster. Nobody liked it (including the dev who implemented it).
What resulted is that they turned off ads altogether[2]. I haven’t seen them post about a retrospective, but since they’ve never looked back. It seems like turning off ads was a good decision for both the users of OGS and the platform as a whole.
1: https://forums.online-go.com/t/speeding-up-ogs-around-the-wo...
zimbatm · 5 years ago
Ads are an attack on our attention.
When I go to a website, I decide to direct my attention to this website, because I believe it will offer something of interest to me.
Obviously things don't come for free, somebody has to pay for it, but the issue is that as a user, I didn't agree to getting my attention diverted. The trade isn't done upfront and by the time I see the ad, it's already too late.
There is also a collective argument to me made about humanity browsing like headless chickens and not being able to focus on important things because of all these distractions.
topicseed · 5 years ago
Would you say the same about free TV's ads coming mid-program? Or newspapers you actually buy that still contain ads? How would such a trade be done upfront in your opinion?
In a way, you are the one coming to PLATFORM (site, newspaper, TV program), so don't come back maybe, but don't tell PLATFORM whether they can out a distracting vase at the entrance, or ads on the sidebar, or a distracting ticker at the bottom of the screen.
deallocator · 5 years ago
I think the correct analogy would be that there's a corner in the screen where advertisement is playing constantly while whatever show you're watching runs. Obviously the advertisement is going to distract you from time to time, and you won't have your full attention on the show.
laurowyn · 5 years ago
Is forcibly breaking away from the content you want to watch every 10 minutes to show ads not distracting? or the 2 minutes of repeated content from before the break to remind you what was happening before you got distracted by the ads not also distracting? Have you ever watched a show with the ads removed and seen how much of it is actually repeated just because of ad placements?
Just because it's not on screen the entire time doesn't mean it isn't a distraction. TV ad breaks are one of the best methods for producers - guaranteed impressions, broad audiences, official metrics, etc. - whilst also being the worst for consumers. An hour of my time set aside for watching something I enjoy now contains 20 minutes of content I don't care about at all, and cannot skip/bypass if not interested, and the 40 minutes of content is closer to 30 because of repeated content either side of ad breaks.
sokoloff · 5 years ago
That is a huge part of why TiVo was so transformative when it came out.
“We’ll be back in...<skip, skip, skip, skip>...and we’re back.”
Lio · 5 years ago
I recently cancelled a NowTV subscription because of the unskippable trailers at the start of each programme.
For free to air TV I only watch, and it's very occasionally these days, shows that I have recorded to PVR where I skip all the adverts.
I avoid sites with pop-overs for newsletters or animated averts whenever possible.
They're not a "distracting vase at the entrance" they're a "crass man who steps into your path whilst screaming in your face".
I don't know what business models such sites should adopt but I do know that things that invasively take control from me or try to break my concentration, if only for a moment, are things I find deeply unpleasant.
That might say more about me than the advertising industry but there you go.
I'm grateful for sites like lichess and the stance they are taking. It's lovely and quite.
sillysaurusx · 5 years ago
They don't have to be.
Let me do some advertising right now. Daniel Naroditsky's twitch stream is amazing. Go watch 'em https://www.twitch.tv/gmnaroditsky
(If you're into chess, you almost certainly already know about him.)
He also gets into feuds with Hikaru and won't shut up about him for some reason nowadays, and is constantly on a soapbox, but whatever. The chess is fun to watch.
Now, if you saw a banner ad for that on lichess, would you really feel awful about it? I mean, that's a fine perspective, but I'm of the opinion of "just shovel all the content in front of me and let me pick out what I like." It works wonderfully on YouTube's recommendation algorithm.
But of course, your feelings are justified for modern ads as currently implemented. Mobile games are just a complete horror fest now. (It was delightful to discover Cardinal Quest 2, since every aspect of the game can be played without paying a cent or seeing an ad. It's more or less "chess, but with monsters.")
bscphil · 5 years ago
> Now, if you saw a banner ad for that on lichess, would you really feel awful about it?
Frankly, yes. Lichess is such a relief because I know it's a place I can go without someone trying to sell me something.
sillysaurusx · 5 years ago
Fair!
amadvance · 5 years ago
Did you donated to it ? Because this is possible only with donations.
I did, but if at some point they will have to add some ad, I won't consider that awful if done in the right way.
paxys · 5 years ago
> I did, but if at some point they will have to add some ad
Why? Plenty of sites are able to survive solely on a donation model, even large ones. Look at Wikipedia.
michaelt · 5 years ago
> They don't have to be.
Modest ads wouldn't be a problem if I hadn't seen so many major sites follow a slippery slope from that to obnoxious ads and heavy tracking.
After all, ad money $ will show up instantly and measurably in an A/B test or project outcome, while turned-off users, lost trust, garish design and poor performance have much subtler, harder to measure impacts.
And before you know it you're a newspaper website with 20 tracking scripts, or youtube with ads layered on ads layered on ads.
__s · 5 years ago
lichess has links to streamers on the home page, so they are serving ads by your definition
Naroditsky isn't paying you to promote his stream, so it doesn't qualify as an ad as ads are being referred to in lichess's post
Stratoscope · 5 years ago
> Ads are an attack on our attention.
That may well be true, but let me tell you a story.
I recently got into binge watching some old TV shows I enjoyed as a kid, like What's My Line and a few others. But most of the YouTube copies have the commercials stripped out!
The few videos that have the old commercials are a blast. The Remington Rand Univac Electronic Brain. The Remington Rand Shaver! And as we all know, 9 out of 10 doctors recommend Camels.
Flintstones fan? How about Fred and Barney sneaking out back to smoke some Winstons while Wilma and Betty mow the lawn.
I wonder which of today's web ads will achieve the cultural significance of these old classics?
zorked · 5 years ago
Sorry but those commercials have no cultural significance. It's just stuff you remember.
Stratoscope · 5 years ago
You are right, of course. But isn't "cultural significance" just another way of saying "stuff people remember?"
auxym · 5 years ago
A literature teacher of mine would say, "culture is what you remember after you've forgotten everything about my class".
catlifeonmars · 5 years ago
What exactly is cultural significance?
vishnugupta · 5 years ago
I too look back at old ads with fondness and reminisce about the simple times of late 80s and early 90s. However when I recollect how I felt at that time about those ads it's no different from today.
The fondness that I associate with those ads are because they are a window to a world that was simpler and in someways beautiful. Do I miss those times? Somewhat. Do I want those days back? Probably not, because for me (and my generation) the progress has been stupendous.
Stratoscope · 5 years ago
Indeed, for me that would be the late 1950s. Times were simpler in some ways, not so much in others.
Our house was one of the first built in the neighborhood. The house being built next door after we moved in had one feature we didn't have: a bomb shelter!
So we made that our neighborhood clubhouse. It was a place where all the kids could hang out. We brought cookies and snacks and prepared for survival.
And when nothing bad ended up happening, and the new owners moved in and kicked us out, we were just happy that the world hadn't ended!
vishnugupta · 5 years ago
That is such an awesome story, thanks for sharing!
Thanks to HN for connecting people across time and space and enabling exchange of memorable experiences.
lazyweb · 5 years ago
That sounds to me like you're having an emotional / nostalgic response to things you were exposed to during your youth. And there is some kind of novelty to watching older commercials, no doubt. But IMO that wears of quickly. What's left is capitalistic propaganda often riddled with sexism, misogynism, homophobia etc. which to me is the real cultural significance. Not exactly sure what changed though, wether companies discovered it's more profitable to put on an act of some kind of progressive consumerism, or if it's an actual response to an evolving society.
Stratoscope · 5 years ago
Guilty as charged! And of course when I view some of those old commercials through my modern eyes, I am shocked.
But you have to admit that the Remington Rand Univac Electronic Brain predicting the weather was pretty cool, yes?
timeslip1523 · 5 years ago
As propaganda ages and stops being an effective meme-weapon, the propaganda fades and the art shined through. Old, obsolete ads for dead products that you look up out of curiosity are mostly harmless.
Still doesn't mean I'm not installing and updating my adblocker!
jek0 · 5 years ago
A friend of mine, from Romania, has fond memories of his youth under the communist rule of Nicolae Ceaușescu, being always reminded how great the leader was and how he admired him as a kid.
He discovered later he was only manipulated into that, but still classified this as good memories.
It's a little bit like those old adverts, it doesn't mean it is a good thing to perpetuate.
paxys · 5 years ago
> I wonder which of today's web ads will achieve the cultural significance of these old classics?
This is very unlikely. Back in the day ads were a form of content in themselves. They had to be memorable to be effective, since your TV did not have a "click here" button. Web ads are more comparable to junk flyers, and I doubt you remember any of those.
Stratoscope · 5 years ago
After reading the replies, I should clarify something. When I see some of those old commercials today, I too think they are appalling. Fred and Barney smoking Winstons? On a kid's show? 9 out of 10 doctors recommending Camels? Ugh. But they sure are interesting to see again.
Some of the other ads were great. A live report from the computer room where the Remington Rand Univac Electronic Brain was predicting the weather? Awesome! And a big step on the way to today where I can use Weather Underground forecasts and talk to you over radio and light waves on our personal supercomputers.
dash2 · 5 years ago
Use the back button and don't go there again. Website owners need to make a living, they have a right to try to do so the way they see best, and not all consumers share your preferences.
ratww · 5 years ago
Using the back button is not enough.
Even using your method, the website will transmit information about me to several ad networks without my consent about retargeting, about which sites I'm visiting, which sites I visited before (via referrer header) and will fingerprint me. Even with their (mostly non-compliant) GDPR cookie banners, information is still transmitted.
As far as I'm concerned, no website owner has ever given me a choice of "just using the back button".
Only ad-blocking is enough to stop this from happening.
pabs3 · 5 years ago
Your browser is the entity transmitting information to ad networks, your browser is obeying instructions from the website instead of obeying your instructions.
fsflover · 5 years ago
Which happens because you run non-free JS code: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html
johannes1234321 · 5 years ago
Whether the code is free or not is irrelevant for that.
fsflover · 5 years ago
Any examples of free JS doing that?
tnzm · 5 years ago
Is there any other kind of code which can be ascertained to obey its user?
johannes1234321 · 5 years ago
The question is who audits it etc.
This will become more funny with We assembly. There review isnahrder and even if it is free software it will be ages to verify the code the server delivers matches the source.
There is a fundamental control issue where a license debate is irrelevant detour. (For me this is the biggest flaw in the FSF - they haven't grasped that yet, while smart ideas would be needed)
fsflover · 5 years ago
> The question is who audits it etc.
The question is whether it is auditable and improvable. This is what free software is for.
tnzm · 5 years ago
Provided a malicious host could take measures to serve the auditors a binary that matches the source, and something entirely different for everyone else, I know of no good way to confirm that a remotely served binary corresponds to the published source.
That's why the FSF takes a stand against what it calls "software as a service substitute". Technically, they are correct, for the reason stated above. An Internet that is pure protocol, with clients for remote services being local apps, is not difficult to imagine; in fact, that's how it started and that's how it still works.
What's different is the friction of running an embedded blob from a webpage is negligible compared to installing a package on your OS, therefore the "distribution" phase of the software lifecycle is effectively factored out, making the opportunity for user choice minimal. (Unless you run NoScript or LibreJS by default, which I support.)
Economically, SaaS is the path of least resistance. You deliver your product through the same platform that people use to browse cat pics, and it works invisibly enough that users never question whether it's doing the right thing. This creates ample opportunity for externalities to be dumped onto the end user, as we observe with the nascent privacy crisis.
Perhaps such an externality is of a sufficiently complex or speculative nature that users may not be able to identify it, or willing to care. But that doesn't mean it's ruled out; at least in theory, integrating with the existing legal system by way of distributing your code under a Libre license seems like a good way to nip possible shenanigans in the bud. (As far as your code is concerned, of course - as opposed to everyone else's non-free code out there.)
Of course, everyone is free to do what they think best, but it's good to have the FSF's radical evangelism as a point of reference - it's quite possible to do meaningful computing in this way, although maybe not as part of an organization that ignores the ethical underpinnings of its methods! (And that's what computers do best nowadays: algowashing.)
Sadly, I find the FSF's approach to the Web somewhat misplaced - for software that is neither locally deployed, nor accessed as an opaque service, but remotely delivered on-demand, focus should be on the delivery chain being auditable, and source maps being available, in the case of WASM and minified JS.
Instead, we get LibreJS, which is, as far as I can see, a license-based whitelist - regardless of the fact that non-minified JS is open-source by definition and never compiled to a binary form. The GPL doesn't make a whole lot of sense for embedded scripts, powerful as they are. It would be more relevant for WebAssembly, that's for sure.
tnzm · 5 years ago
FIX: it's actually "service as a software substitute", not the other way around.
FSF could benefit from catchier nomenclature, even the "free as in blah blah" is too complex for the knee-jerk thinking cultivated in consumers; why couldn't they have called it "freedomware" or some such, I can't help but wonder; it was born in the same epoch as "shareware", "freeware", etc.
"Libre" is cute but causes associations with communism in the American public - same core userbase that is happy with shooting people in the name of "freedom", and would be proud to promote "freedomware", unlike today.
paxys · 5 years ago
There are many free and open source ad trackers out there.
tnzm · 5 years ago
The "user" in this scenario would be the advertiser. While I have little sympathy for ads, and dread the emergent effects of behavioral tracking, a self-deployed ad tracker could at least be trusted by the advertiser who seeks to benefit from it, as opposed to serving the interests of its vendor first and foremost.
pabs3 · 5 years ago
Any kind of requests can be used for tracking purposes, not just JS.
sildur · 5 years ago
I also have a right to handle their HTML the way I see fit, for instance by blocking their ads. If they don't like it, they should make their website private.
paulcole · 5 years ago
> I also have a right to handle their HTML the way I see fit
I see this more as you technically having the ability to do this, but what makes it your “right”?
LocalPCGuy · 5 years ago
Not the OP, but I have the right to control what code is delivered to (downloaded) and run on my computer.
That doesn't mean I have the right to use a website that decides they aren't good with me doing so without the ads or other portions I may block.
I don't believe I have any moral obligation to make that choice myself. Simply put, I have the right to block ads, and the website has the right to block usage to me if I don't load said ads, trackers, etc.
paulcole · 5 years ago
> Simply put, I have the right to block ads
Let’s assume I agree that you have been tricked into following a link that is infested with terrible ads and that I agree you have the right to block those ads.
Isn’t it then your obligation to never visit that site again?
You understand that ads are how the website has chosen to make money. You don’t like how they have chosen to make money so you simply never visit the website again, right?
It’s like if you found out a restaurant didn’t accept cash and still kept going to eat there when you only had a credit card, knowing in advance you can’t and won’t pay.
sildur · 5 years ago
> Isn’t it then your obligation to never visit that site again?
Not really. As long as your site is public, I can enter. If you don't want that, make it private, or subscription only.
> It’s like if you found out a restaurant didn’t accept cash and still kept going to eat there when you only had a credit card, knowing in advance you can’t and won’t pay.
It's more like going to a public museum that accepts donations and not making a donation. The place is public, and I decide if I pay or not.
LocalPCGuy · 5 years ago
No, how a website monetizes their site is not my concern. Just because they choose ads does not obligate me to decide to not go there again. In fact, due to my technology choices, I may never even realize they have chosen that route as I may never see their ads in the first place.
As a publicly available resource, it is like browsing. I can browse many brick and mortar stores without exchanging anything of value. And like a store, if a website decided they did not want people browsing without a purchase, they could block access.
ddevault · 5 years ago
No one has a right to a viable business model. If it makes a negative impact on society, we can and should regulate it. Ads are a pox on this Earth.
tayo42 · 5 years ago
Those few good years after pop up ads were eliminated by pop up blockers and ad blockers was so nice. Then the war on ad block began and internet is worse then it used to be.
Auto play videos in a modal that can't be closed that start with a video on. Wtf
cletus · 5 years ago
It's pretty much mandatory to have (yet another) addon to disable autoplaying videos, sadly.
I think I hate this more than ads, honestly (not all autoplaying videos are ads).
smichel17 · 5 years ago
Firefox lets you do this without need for an addon. Stop using an ad company's browser if you don't want to see ads; there is a huge conflict of interest.
pessimizer · 5 years ago
Google also almost entirely finances firefox development.
gordian-mind · 5 years ago
Does this mean Firefox is controlled opposition? }:)
grishka · 5 years ago
Thankfully all news websites serve their videos from a separate domain, so you only have to block that in your ad blocker. Or, just disable JavaScript and hope that won't break images because loading images with JavaScript is apparently also the hot new thing to do.
alpaca128 · 5 years ago
Popups and ads can still be blocked very effectively. Since I downloaded a comprehensive hosts file blacklist and filled all checkboxes in uBlock Origin's settings it's extremely rare something slips through, and if it does I can just interactively add a rule for it with a few clicks.
roenxi · 5 years ago
That is like saying the taste of good food is an attack on our reward system. Attention works that way because it is often helpful.
On a normal day advertising is pretty useless. When the world is changing it is a very effective way to find that out. It is part of the system that drives rapid improvement.
Chris2048 · 5 years ago
The sugar and salt added to food is an attack on our reward system - but that doesn't make it good food.
The fact is that human biological impulse does not line up with rational objectives. People wouldn't need to be subjected to ads if it was desirable - they'd ask for them, much like those "shopping channels" you can choose to watch.
roenxi · 5 years ago
As a general comment - human biological impulses do generally line up with rational objectives. That is why we have them. Normally they line up with ideas that are so good it makes sense to embed them in how we live.
> People wouldn't need to be subjected to ads if it was desirable
Substantial value from ads is they communicate (1) what people didn't yet know existed and (2) what everyone else knows (because they saw the ad too).
Ads work by and large because people want the products that the ads are selling. A lot of ads are stupid and I'd personally rather not see them - but if I think that, they also probably aren't targeted at me.
Chris2048 · 5 years ago
> That is why we have them
evolutionary objectives are not rational. Nor are they particularly up-to-date, especially sugar cravings. Addictions, vices and impulses of many kinds are not at all rational, and it is a virtue to have the willpower to resist them.
> (1) what people didn't yet know existed
This is far from the only objective, and the substance of many ads demonstrates this: why do brands like coca-cola pay top-dollar for superbowl ad time? You would think they are well known enough..
> (2) what everyone else knows
Ads are not knowledge, it is common cultural reference for the purpose of advertisement. I don't see the value in this if you are not an advertiser.
> Ads work by and large because people want the products that the ads are selling
If we follow the same logic, no one would object to ad blockers, b/c the people who want to see ads wouldn't use them.
vasco · 5 years ago
When you open the window do you feel the roads, houses or buildings you see are an attack on your attention? That your own house is an attack on the attention of others? That people would rather just see the raw nature that was there before?
ulimn · 5 years ago
Yes, I do sometimes.
Hoasi · 5 years ago
Absolutely. Modern architecture, coupled with politicians and developers’s greed and the lack of urban planners care, can be an attack on our intelligence, our senses and our basic human aesthetic needs. It’s not just about capturing our attention.
jedimastert · 5 years ago
I don't, but I don't think it's as uncommon a view as you seem to make it out to be.
paxys · 5 years ago
No but a street full of posters and billboards definitely is.
jedimastert · 5 years ago
Everything is an "attack" on our attention. It's not a very useful distinction.
I clicked the link because the title caught my attention. I come to this website because it has a rotation of good content, all of which is more likely than not to catch and hold my attention, keeping it from something else.
I also don't generally agree that all ads are bad, which may put me in the minority
GavinMcG · 5 years ago
Even accepting that everything counts as an attack, there can't be an ad attacking your attention when it doesn't exist on the page in the first place.
jedimastert · 5 years ago
I put "attack" in scare-quotes for a reason. I don't see any of these things as an "attack". If I did, I wouldn't do them.
GavinMcG · 5 years ago
Well then you're not really engaging with the parent comment.
The author said they "decide to direct my attention to this website" and used "attack" because they "didn't agree to getting my attention diverted."
The useful distinction is between the content you came to the website to direct your attention toward, and things that tear your attention away.
ApolloFortyNine · 5 years ago
>there can't be an ad attacking your attention when it doesn't exist on the page in the first place.
We can even go one step further and say there can't be an ad attacking your attention when the page itself doesn't exist at all.
The bulk of the internet wouldn't exist if not for ads. Things like youtube almost certainly could not exist, with how expensive it is to store data, provide bandwidth, develop the site itself. It's only thanks to ads that the internet is where it is today.
GavinMcG · 5 years ago
Which is why the parent comment acknowledged that "Obviously things don't come for free, somebody has to pay for it".
The fact that ads got us here doesn't mean that we should uncritically accept that business model going forward.
pbhjpbhj · 5 years ago
Hmm, I'm very anti-ads; they're a scourge on society. However, a genuine report of "I read this book, you can get it here" isn't really any different attention-wise if it has a referral code.
Now, the problem is there's no way to know if it was motivated at all (nor to what extent) by the promise of a referral fee. So it could be noise and not a genuine referral based on intrinsic qualities of the product.
I've advertised things on my blog, using referral codes, because that helps me defray hosting charges (I've largely stopped as the income is far too low in recent years; I've also mostly moved my content to third party sites with open licenses) but they've always been genuine either comparative reviews (which I was doing to help me decide what to get) or recommendations based on something I use. I'm putting that link there anyway, the company might as well pay me if anyone follows it.
"For example I used to use Digital Ocean to spin up a Minecraft server for occasional use, recently I've been using Vultr for the same - it seems substantially cheaper, and there was a good deal on for a free month."
Suppose that true comment had referral links, would it really be intrinsically worse?
paulcole · 5 years ago
> Ads are an attack on our attention.
He said after celebrating 10 years posting on a site that’s an ad for a VC fund...
silicon2401 · 5 years ago
This is a pretty extreme and entitled position. You're the one assuming that the website will offer you something of interest without any reason to do so, and that you should receive it however you want (without ads). If anything it's more reasonable to assume that you'll see ads on every page you go to.
I take the complete opposite position: if I take the effort to make a website, I'll do what I want with it. Maybe I consider your visit an attack on my bandwidth, and I compensate with ads. If you don't like it, you're free to not visit it. Unless I told you in advance that you're not going to see ads, there's no basis for assuming that there won't be ads just like there's no basis for assuming you won't see NSFW content on a random website, religious content, political content, etc
Chris2048 · 5 years ago
> You're the one assuming that the website will offer you something of interest without any reason to do so
Says who? Arguing against ads isn't arguing against compensation. You're assuming what is being assumed.
silicon2401 · 5 years ago
Says the comment I replied to
> When I go to a website, I decide to direct my attention to this website, because I believe it will offer something of interest to me.
Chris2048 · 5 years ago
That quote doesn't contradict what I said, since it says nothing about "without any reason to do so".
You are specifically talking about compensation, which that quote does not.
silicon2401 · 5 years ago
You must be pulling my leg, you're not even addressing what I've been commenting
executesorder66 · 5 years ago
If they did that I'd immediately switch to something else. Nothing pisses me off more that spam. And all ads are spam. If I wanted something, I'd look for it. If you have to tell me about it first, then it's spam. Don't waste people's time/bandwidth/attention with things they didn't even want in the first place.
And the counterpoint that "but they might not have known about x product in the first place" is useless. Because if they wanted/needed something like x they would have just googled "something that can do x" and found x.com or whatever to discover it. To reiterate, the fact that they weren't looking for it in the first place means that they didn't want it.
See also this[0] guy that did extensive tests and found that "tasteful and responsible" banner ads pissed people off enough to negatively affect traffic to his website.
indigochill · 5 years ago
From the outside, I like what ReadTheDocs does with Ethical Ads. Because ReadTheDocs's scope is largely limited to technical users, they can deliver "targeted marketing" where they're delivering ads based on the content of their pages rather than user tracking. Also the ads I remember seeing didn't feature attention-grabbing images, just a solid background, the advertiser's logo, and some text about what they're selling. It meshed a lot better with the page content than most ads do.
Cthulhu_ · 5 years ago
Why are you even offering a compromise when they aren't interested? There's plenty of ways for an organization like Lichess to raise funds, the ones that don't claim your attention or fuck your privacy over. Even sponsored links to e.g. chess books as mentioned elsewhere 'leak' data, they contain a referral link, linking that user's visit of the website to (e.g.) their Amazon account. Plus it would be a pittance compared to what Amazon makes off it.
IF they need money they can open up a fundraiser or donation channel.
9387367 · 5 years ago
You are missing the point. Lichess is creating a very strong competitive advantage by positioning their platform as ad free.
Want to put this to a test? Imagine if you were to create a competitor and you also wanted to run ads, now imagine you will be competing with an extremely successful project that people love that doesn’t run ads so you will never be able to offer a better experience to their users.
Lichess is unbeatable.
giords · 5 years ago
You're pretty much describing chess.com
Scarblac · 5 years ago
And chess.com has more money to spend, so they can have things like paid grandmasters streaming, video courses, offical tournaments with large prizes. It's not all ad based, they also have a subscription model that opens more features.
It's good that both exist. I spend 99% of my online chess playing time on Lichess but there are also lots of people for who it is the other way around.
greedo · 5 years ago
You do realize that the world champion regularly plays on lichess, right? As do a huge number of GMs?
nicky0 · 5 years ago
I think the point was that Chess.com is financially supporting lots of streamers (including titled players).
Scarblac · 5 years ago
Yes but they don't pay GMs to produce content.
srg0 · 5 years ago
chess.com was founded in 2007. lichess started in 2010. So chess.com was already an established player.
The point is that creating a new chess site today would require to be better than lichess. If we look where Magnus Carlsen investment goes, they are all paid services (Play Magnus/chess24/chessable). He doesn't event try to compete with chess.com/lichess.
motiejus · 5 years ago
Lwn.net does this right: the ads are non-intrusive, and are designed for the audience. Most frequently - hosting or datacenter space.
surfsvammel · 5 years ago
I believe what they are saying is that money is not the goal, the goal is the spread chess, and having ads does not contribute to that goal. That’s it.
I find it quiet strange, that we are living in a world where ads are so ubiquitous that a site is explaining why they don’t have ads, rather than webpages that use ads explain why they do.
Larok00 · 5 years ago
To me it seems like not starting down that path is the only surefire way of drawing a distinction between what is acceptable and what isn't.
Also from a user's perspective, I would undoubtedly choose the one without ads of the two alternatives if they were competing.
latexr · 5 years ago
From the text you quoted:
> There is absolutely nothing positive about advertisements on websites from the perspective of their users.
From your response:
> I think that is a legit way to get a little income without burdening my users.
The former puts users first; the latter puts them last. There’s a chasm between “what do they want” and “what will they bear”.
yesenadam · 5 years ago
I can't tell you how much I love this comment. Thank you. :-)
bogwog · 5 years ago
It's always so strange to see people who try to rationalize ads. They're either being dishonest about their own opinions about ads because they're guilty of serving them, or they're so far detached from reality that they genuinely don't see how much people hate ads, and just how bad they are for consumers.
Maybe it's the Facebooks/Googles of the world who are responsible for creating a generation of developers that see ads as the only feasible business model?
If you have an ad-supported service, and you remove ads for a day, *100%* of your users will love you for it. That should tell you something!
matheusmoreira · 5 years ago
People go to your web development blog because they want to read about web development. They didn't go there for VPS advertisements. Make a specific page for that so that anyone who wants to know what hosting services you recommend will seek it out and visit it.
Anything else means you're selling your reader's attention to the highest bidder. You're deliberately adding noise to your website and reducing its usability. Also it immediately introduces conflict of intetest: you're associated with the company you're advertising so any positive opinions you might have about their products ought to be taken with several grains of salt.
laydn · 5 years ago
Cost breakdown here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Si3PMUJGR9KrpE5lngSk...
I hope OVH would donate some compute/machines to lichess. It would help lichess a lot financially. It would be good publicity for OVH and I think it would be a drop in the ocean on their balance sheet.
nly · 5 years ago
Holy hell that's an expensive project. Do donations cover all this, or are the operators independently wealthy and generous?
YetAnotherNick · 5 years ago
That's a cheap project. I have seen a single developer's salary to be more than that. Considering that around a billion games were played last year in lichess.
ishiz · 5 years ago
What I find interesting is the part at the bottom that shows how much a donation helps: a $5 donation is enough to cover the company's budget for 6 minutes. This sounds really good for a few reasons: 1) since I play Lichess for several hours a month, I feel that I'm really getting my money's worth; 2) Lichess only needs a few thousand people to contribute $5/mo to stay net positive and I feel like it's easier to convince a few thousand people in a supportive community to part ways with $5 than it is for other companies to get a million people to donate $1; 3) I remember Reddit used to show on your profile how many server minutes your Gold purchase was worth and it would display something like 200 minutes for every $5 purchase, but this is only a single server out of hundreds and doesn't account for any other expenses, so Lichess is unsurprisingly very cheap to operate in comparison.
sillysaurusx · 5 years ago
Uh, $55k a year is not cheap! What world... Ok, it's late, I'll hold back the rest of my words. :)
I think you were saying it's cheap relative to the impact it has. I agree. But "holy hell that's expensive" is an entirely accurate reaction for someone who wants to fund it out of pocket.
(Gwern covers our TPU/ML infrastructure costs for around $350/mo, and I wince that I wasn't able to optimize it cheaper.)
jpeter · 5 years ago
55k is just the cost of the server. The total cost is 400k
sillysaurusx · 5 years ago
Holy guacamole, I didn't scroll down far enough. Thank you for pointing this out.
"French taxes" is $53k, which is nearly equal to their server fees. Wow.
Props to them for however they manage to get $400k/yr for a free project with no business model, and no intended business model. (I'm serious; it's a wonderful thing for the world, and a tremendous example of what people can achieve without having a monetary focus.)
tdubhro1 · 5 years ago
Interesting that a non profit pays 55k in French taxes
ironicsonic · 5 years ago
Most likely taxes on wage for the main developer salary. The tax wedge in France is slightly under 50%, so that checks out.
tonyedgecombe · 5 years ago
It's progressive and only gets to 45% once you reach €155K so that doesn't sound quite right.
paduc · 5 years ago
I believe he's talking about social contributions (health, retirement, unemployment), that the employer pays, and not the taxes on revenue (paid by the employee).
matsemann · 5 years ago
I feel like the developer/founder should have a higher salary. $58k a year for running a site with millions of games per day.. deserves more. Is it because they don't get enough donations? Or saving the extra money for growth/buffer?
(edit: originally posted this as a top level comment but felt it fit better here)
Edit2: just checked. I've spent 11 whole days playing chess there (and not sure if that only counts games and not tactics etc). Made my first donation now.
de6u99er · 5 years ago
I recall an AMA on Reddit, where the founder said he is perfectly fune with his salary as long as LiChess stays free and he can continue doing what he loves.
ZephyrBlu · 5 years ago
I think the founder should have "fuck you" money, not just a reasonable salary.
hobofan · 5 years ago
Well it seems like the founder doesn't want more money. Not everyone needs or wants "fuck you" money, and with that kind of salary you can afford a decent life in (most of) France.
ZephyrBlu · 5 years ago
This is assuming that this stream of income doesn't ever dry up.
I personally think that the founder should have enough money to never worry about money, or at least have a big buffer.
If at some point in the future for whatever reason Lichess gets less donations, he could be screwed.
On the other hand if he had a bit of a warchest he either has runway to increase revenue or to find another source of income.
indigochill · 5 years ago
Then really Lichess should have FU money. This both secures his income as long as he continues working on it, then lets him hire a replacement whenever he decides to retire.
ZephyrBlu · 5 years ago
Sure, it's up the founder of course. I think the they've created enough value to deserve that money for themselves and to use in any way they see fit though.
Maybe that would be putting it back into Lichess when they retire or maybe after 10 years they decide they want to work on something else and they live off that money to do so.
tonyedgecombe · 5 years ago
>If at some point in the future for whatever reason Lichess gets less donations, he could be screwed.
No doubt they would get a job like the rest of us.
The problem with your proposition is it can never be satisfied, you will never have enough.
ZephyrBlu · 5 years ago
> No doubt they would get a job like the rest of us
"I personally think that the founder should have enough money to never worry about money, or at least have a big buffer"
> The problem with your proposition is it can never be satisfied, you will never have enough
Where did you get this idea from? If you control your expenses (Like it sounds like the founder does) then the "never having enough" problem doesn't exist. At that point more money just means a larger buffer.
acjacobson · 5 years ago
I would argue he already does. The entire point of "fuck you" money is that you are no longer beholden to someone else - it is not so much defined by the overall amount, but by the freedom it can buy you. He gets to work on what he loves doing every day doing it exactly the way he wants.
ZephyrBlu · 5 years ago
My definition of FU money is that you have enough money to be secure no matter what.
I think he would still rely on the month to month or year to year income rather than being completely secure.
auggierose · 5 years ago
Nobody is completely secure.
hinkley · 5 years ago
I’m currently trying to figure out if I wanted to work 20 hours a month post-retirement, what sort of work that would look like.
There are a handful of nature and nurture reasons that tell me that full retirement would likely be very bad for my health. And of course partial retirement I could start a little sooner.
not1ofU · 5 years ago
The joy of FU money https://thedeepdish.org/fuck-you-money/
room271 · 5 years ago
You are projecting your own desires onto the founder (which is fine, but worth thinking about why they don't want the same thing as you). It seems clear that they are happy with their salary/work. For some people, more money beyond this is not a good thing.
ZephyrBlu · 5 years ago
I'm not. It's not about having more money to spend, but having enough to be permanently secure.
The founder could have FU money, still draw a ~50k/yr salary and keep their spending at the same level. The only difference is that if circumstances change the founder is still secure instead.
hinkley · 5 years ago
If I could wave a wand and give you enough money to quit tomorrow, what would you do with yourself?
What if your best friend were already doing his thing? Would you feel the urge to send me to talk to him, or is he good?
ZephyrBlu · 5 years ago
I don't know what you second line means, but I would continue working. Possibly reduced hours, but still working.
hinkley · 5 years ago
If you’re already doing the thing you would do if you could do anything, do you still feel the need for “enough money” to walk out and go do it. I think, and some other posters seem to agree, that the answer is a qualified no.
ipaddr · 5 years ago
If you gave me enough money I would quit. Can you include some seed money for my new startup?
seszett · 5 years ago
The man describes himself as a pastafarian antifascist and lichess as a hippie communist chess server. I don't think he has the same opinion on money as you do.
fionnohGoDeo · 5 years ago
Here's the AMA: https://old.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/mpasyl/i_started_lic...
And the answer in question: https://old.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/mpasyl/i_started_lic...
"That's my salary before income taxes. I think it's about right.
Could I make more by selling my skills to the highest bidder? Probably.
Would I be happier? Hell no.
The way I see it, that's a lot money for a job I can do at my own rhythm from the comfort of my home. And instead of bosses or clients, I work for an awesome community."
de6u99er · 5 years ago
Thanks!
indigochill · 5 years ago
>I feel like the developer/founder should have a higher salary.
This is probably the root of most of tech's angst: people thinking they're entitled to get rich just because they made /run something.
If you can live comfortably doing something as rewarding as making something like Lichess, what more can you really want? People are talking about FU money/financial independence, which I agree is nice, but you can totally get there on $58k/year by living below your means and investing.
The reason I say it leads to angst is when you expect more than a comfortable salary, you're imposing a higher financial burden on the overall system than necessary, which can sometimes work in the short term, but in the long term introduces drag on development/stability because those extra thousands you're personally socking away aren't going towards, say, getting a contractor to address little issues or going into the rainy day fund.
matsemann · 5 years ago
I'm not talking about entitlement. But this guy is really good at multiple things. SRE, frontend, backend, project management etc. He could probably earn twice as much working a normal job, and even more for the right company.
He don't want to. And maybe don't want/need to earn more. And that is completely fine. But his impact is huuuge. I'd wish more people did like him. But I don't think many will, because those skilled enough to make something similar would rather work for a higher salary.
So it's more a sigh from me, that I'd wish more people would be able to sustain making and giving away something great like this, without having to sacrifice money. Why should optimizing ad clicks give you millions, but making this only thousands?
You know, in the same way there often are discussions here about making open source income viable. It would be better for everyone if these unsung heroes got more than just praise. Then others would follow suit.
agustif · 5 years ago
If he keeps 100% of ownership, that 58k can become 500k in a few years?
jononor · 5 years ago
What do you mean by ownership? Lichess is a non-profit association, not a limited company owned by the developer.
littlestymaar · 5 years ago
> But this guy is really good at multiple things. SRE, frontend, backend, project management etc. He could probably earn twice as much working a normal job, and even more for the right company.
AFAIK, he is French, so you need to compare it with the local job market: there's no way he could get twice as much even in the most-paying company here, the market price for such a profile is probably around €70k, assuming he wanted to work in Paris[1] (or maybe Lille or Lyon), and if he lives anywhere else in France, he's probably already earning as much as he could wish, and he's working one something that matters to him. I would totally take such a deal.
[1] Ok, this is probably way less relevant nowadays, since covid made remote work mainstream for most of us, but remote work was barely imaginable in most French company before the pandemic came.
seszett · 5 years ago
Pretty sure he lives somewhere in Western France where housing is a lot more affordable than Paris (or Lille or Lyon).
dwaltrip · 5 years ago
He seems like he is truly in the upper echelons of engineering and product development ability, including soft skills as well. I’m sure he could easily make more than €70k. He might need to live in a major city though.
hinkley · 5 years ago
If you shelve the cynicism, I think the main reason you want a big pile of cash around is so when you discover that thing that makes you happy you don’t miss out on it. You don’t have to compromise.
But people get distracted by things they “can afford,” the amount of money they “need” ratchets way up, and they find themselves missing out on things and making compromises anyway.
If you have already found a thing or two that makes you happy, you don’t need to hedge so much. You don’t have to keep trying to stuff things into a hole in your chest trying to fill it up.
Many, many of my parents’ problems went away when one of them started making over $50k a year. If they had been more content then it would have solved many more. Adjusted for inflation that’s a bit more than $58K today, but if your spouse is doing well enough, that’s still perfectly workable. If your health holds.
alexgmcm · 5 years ago
In France that's a reasonable salary for an experienced engineer.
I agree it's low for someone running the whole show, but then he is doing it as a non-profit.
Tech salaries in the US are really high compared to RoW, even once CoL is taken into account.
iSnow · 5 years ago
Gross avg. wage in France is $42700[1] if calculated with 12 months and no variable benefits. Mean would be more interesting, but I don't seem to easily find it.
It might sound weirdly low for someone in IT in the USA, but first, not everyone commands FAANG sales, and second, wages in the EU are comparatively low. With some seniority, you can rise to $100k relatively easily, but you have to sell your soul to either some consulting company or old Fortune-500 industries.
So could be the dev takes an above-avg wage which would be around junior to semi experienced level developer and just does what they want to do: build a chess community.
EDIT: I don't fully understand the tax part, but if the nonprofit also pays his taxes and he goes out with $54k net, he's doing very, very well for an EU country. I've just reached that level give or take and I have lots of seniority in a really profitable old economy country. If I would be gunning higher, I'd have to do consulting or go the people management track.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...
FartyMcFarter · 5 years ago
FAANG salaries in the EU / UK can be nearly as high as in the US though, which in some locations does drive up the compensation for all SWEs.
MauranKilom · 5 years ago
Based on StackOverflow dev survey, EU salaries are roughly 60% of what you get in the US. You'll be hard-pressed to find equivalent positions paying the same in both regions.
cbg0 · 5 years ago
Are those 1:1 comparisons? I know typically in the US salaries advertised are not exactly take-home pay, but before tax amounts, and is some places in Europe salaries are advertised as take-home pay.
MauranKilom · 5 years ago
Well it'll never be 1:1 due to differences in health care etc., of course, but those were all before tax from what I understood.
Not sure how companies advertising take-home pay would work when your tax rate depends on e.g. marital status (at least in Germany it could be off by maybe a factor of 2 in both directions), which country/region are you thinking of there?
disgruntledphd2 · 5 years ago
The salaries in London for FAANG are equivalent to about 60-70% of those in the US. The stock grants are typically smaller, also, though this is less true for software engineers.
The one I used to work for had a real problem of developers leaving for the US on an internal transfer after 12 months, precisely because of the salaries.
acatton · 5 years ago
> It might sound weirdly low for someone in IT in the USA, but first, not everyone commands FAANG sales, and second, wages in the EU are comparatively low. With some seniority, you can rise to $100k relatively easily, but you have to sell your soul to either some consulting company or old Fortune-500 industries.
Exactly.
The non profit is registered in a small town of Maine-et-Loire.[1] Assuming this is close to where the developer lives, €42k goes a long way there. You also have to factor in that he doesn't have to take the Parisian Metro every morning and live in a tiny apartment for €1,000/month.
[1] See the "Is Lichess a non profit?" https://lichess.org/patron
hocuspocus · 5 years ago
> €42k
Note that a competent full-stack Scala developer like Thibault can easily make €70-80k at a French company while working mostly/fully remote. And even more so going into contracting and/or working for foreign clients.
He has his own reasons, working on his own thing being a huge one obviously, but he could definitely make more and keep a similar lifestyle.
robocat · 5 years ago
The $56k/€42k is before tax [π].
Personally I would struggle to pay for a house, support dependants, and save for retirement on that amount. Partially because I went back to $zero in my thirties (although I know plenty of people in the same category much older... Trying to catch up is hard mode).
[π] https://old.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/mpasyl/i_started_lic...
Yajirobe · 5 years ago
Someone of his caliber could easily work remotely and earn 200k+ a year
nly · 5 years ago
Those secret costs seem extreme for something that's only serving a few millions websockets a day
nezirus · 5 years ago
I don't have enough details about the exact setup, but the server cost looks excessive* to me. Especially those Xeon Gold and Silver machines (are they using managed hosting or what). Almost all of them are in single OVH data center too, that's not very robust.
* Compared to a certain German hosting provider, where I can get AMD EPYC 7502P with 128GB RAM for about 100EUR. Again don't know the arrangement, but with some effort they could add more servers, lower the cost and add Geo-resiliency.
hutrdvnj · 5 years ago
"to a certain German hosting provider" Hetzner
nezirus · 5 years ago
Yeah, don't want to provide free advertising (they don't need it), but they should be as reliable as OVH for hosting servers in Europe.
yourad_io · 5 years ago
Until you get DDOSed and then they (Hetzner) null-route your server.
They claim not to:
https://twitter.com/hetzner_online/status/968085046073622528...
I do wonder if that is still the case.
edit: Maybe not: https://community.centminmod.com/threads/any-personal-feedba...
hutrdvnj · 5 years ago
That is quite normal behavior for most hosters and it depends on the strength of DDOS. If you have to deal with DDOS frequently then you need a loadbalancer in between your service and your clients, that offers DDOS protection.
oli5679 · 5 years ago
It's interesting that he spends so little on servers.
1 billion chess games per year, often with >20k concurrent users and and some very heavy-duty engine analysis occurring for some proportion of these games and they only spends $56k.
I have seen startups with only hundreds of customers spend 10x this on AWS by copying the fancy tools used by tech giants.
It is also interesting how little the creator pays himself ($56k) and how much he spends on data protection ($40k), taxes ($52k) and various administration tasks. I wonder if his time is as heavily skewed towards administration as his expenditure.
I would also like to meet this guy, buy him a beer/coffee and thank him for the value he has created:).
ponytech · 5 years ago
> I would also like to meet this guy, buy him a beer/coffee and thank him for the value he has created:).
I had the chance to met him a few years back during a conference in France[1]. He is very friendly indeed.
1: https://mixitconf.org/en/2015/thibault-duplessis-lichess-org...
ponytech · 5 years ago
There's a replay of this talk (from 2015) here: https://www.infoq.com/fr/presentations/lichessorg-open-sourc...
Reminds me memories :)
nly · 5 years ago
I had the opposite reaction.
$1000/mo on a few frontend servers for only 20K concurrent users seems excessive.
I've seen simple $40/mo droplets handle 50,000 concurrent websocket connections with minimal latency without breaking a sweat.
$2000/mo on databases is also nuts, unless you're storing hundreds of terabytes at high redundancy levels.
Eikon · 5 years ago
> $2000/mo on databases is also nuts, unless you're storing hundreds of terabytes at high redundancy levels.
What? 300TB at 0,20e /GB which would actually be quite cheap for fast storage at high redundancy would cost 60 000e / month.
segmondy · 5 years ago
Computers have been so fast for a good + 15yrs. If you don't use bloatware and pile on layers and layers of crap and with good system engineering it's amazing the amount of work you can compute for so little cost.
haskal · 5 years ago
Puzzle Streak/Storm/Racer are the only equivalents that Lichess lacked from Chess.com, but so happy to see them added (like 1-2 months ago?)
Lichess is responsible for most of my chess progress through matches, puzzles, analysis board. Excellent piece of software.
PradeetPatel · 5 years ago
Excellent article. Serious kudos to the Lichess team on building and operating such a complex piece of software purely on donations.
I think the most valuable lesson here for me is the understanding between the contributors and their key stakeholders. Because monetary gains and growth are not their KPI, they were able to maintain their software at their own pace.
Thought exercise: Do you foresee this model staying if Lichess were to be acquired by another company?
cassepipe · 5 years ago
"Lichess is a non-profit association in France"
beforeolives · 5 years ago
I know you framed it as a thought exercise but it's unlikely they'll be acquired - https://lichess.org/contact#help-buy
philliphaydon · 5 years ago
Wow I've never seen or heard of this site, but it's so fast! Navigating anywhere is basically instant for me. Really nice.
Hammershaft · 5 years ago
I just wish Lichess had more accurate ratings
matsemann · 5 years ago
What do you mean by "accurate"? Compared to chess.com? FIDE? USCF? It really makes no sense comparing ratings between different pools. None of them are more accurate, they are just different.
rgoulter · 5 years ago
https://lichess.org/page/rating-systems
Yes, ratings can't be compared between different pools. Different rating systems can perform with different accuracy, though:
Which rating system is best?
The purpose of rating systems is to predict the outcome of games. Therefore, they can be objectively better or worse, according to their ability to make such predictions. Glicko 1 makes better predictions than Elo, and Glicko 2 makes better predictions than Glicko 1
Hammershaft · 5 years ago
'accurate' is definitely the wrong term. I just meant I wished Lichess ratings translated more accurately to FIDE ratings.
V-2 · 5 years ago
It's not really feasible though:
* Online chess typically uses Glicko ratings (this applies to Lichess and chess.com alike), FIDE ratings are based on Elo
* Online ratings are typically blitz ratings - people tend to play fast games online. Obviously FIDE has blitz ratings too, but over the board chess is mostly standard time control, and that's what's typically referred to as a FIDE rating. A lot of people with standard FIDE rating don't even have a blitz one, because OTB blitz tournaments are arguably rare.
kissgyorgy · 5 years ago
Sure this is a very nice cause, but if you don't have proper revenue, you can't pay UX designers to make something more people could use. Explains why Lichess is straight up ugly and the interface is just messy.
neatze · 5 years ago
You making interesting point, with for profit model you can provide better service then with non-profit model to some degree, but it is not always true. There many reasons for such cases, but I think it all comes down to leadership and values of the company, over time leadership and consequently values will change, undoubtedly. Such changes result in higher or lower preference of service to end users versus profits (or innovation, control priorities), I think this is irrespective of for/non-profit organizations.
user48a · 5 years ago
I don't think it is fair to claim that "Lichess is straight up ugly and the interface is just messy" in such absolute terms. While this might be your opinion, I for one like their design a lot and think it's very clean!! (and prefer it to alternative chess websites)...
eeegnu · 5 years ago
There are also open source browser extensions for restyling lichess: https://prettierlichess.github.io/
sellyme · 5 years ago
Lichess makes fantastic use of the screen space available, works excellently on all manners of devices, has a native darkmode, and puts the most relevant content front-and-center instead of designing around revenue generation first and functionality second.
Just because damn-near every other website on the internet is comprised entirely of gradients and parallax scrolling doesn't mean any that doesn't is "ugly".
ratww · 5 years ago
You couldn't be more wrong.
Newspaper websites are full of advertisement and probably the worst sites in terms of UX in the internet. Even if you hide the ads, there's still the constant clickbait and autoplaying videos. Same for paid-by-ad blogs that just use default themes (with notable exceptions like Daring Fireball). Same for any file hosts that doesn't have a freemium model (compare, for example, Mediafire vs Dropbox).
On the other hand, services that offer recurring signatures mostly often have better UX.
krisgenre · 5 years ago
I love lichess but before that (in mid 2000's) used to spend a lot of time on freechess.org. Not sure how popular it is now.
yesenadam · 5 years ago
I think you mean FICS (Free Internet Chess Server)! It started in 1995 I think. I started there too about 2007. It's still going, I visited a few months ago. A bit sleepier than it was. That was the place to follow the moves of live tournaments and discuss the games, before the age of live video broadcasts of tournaments. I loved it so much. Channel 23 was for quacking only etc hehe. Also I mainly played slower games (10 10 or 5 14) and chatted with a lot of the people I played, must have met people from almost every country in the world. I haven't found other sites nearly so friendly.
krisgenre · 5 years ago
Yes. I mostly played 2 12. The place felt like IRC for chess, you had to type commands like 'seek 2 12' for a new game and you needed some desktop client like winboard/xboard to play.
Edit: Just played a game, my ID was still active and my last game was in 2012!
yesenadam · 5 years ago
hehe nice. Yes, FICS is for life. Oh, you didn't use a client?! Mainly I used BabasChess (Windows), which was awesome, I've still never had such a good chess game seeking and playing experience on any site.
facesonflags · 5 years ago
pychess has done pretty well for me, recently updated
nindalf · 5 years ago
I might have played 2000 games on lichess at this point. Everything from the ease of finding a game, to the smoothness of web and mobile clients, to features centred around analysing and improving your game are nearly flawless. Seeing this post about their commitment to keeping it that way thrills me.
ridiculous_fish · 5 years ago
There is Wikipedia, then lichess. Thank you.
xorfish · 5 years ago
I would add https://ourworldindata.org to that list
dagurp · 5 years ago
The first thing I notice on this site is a banner telling me that I will be tracked unless I opt out. This isn't even GDPR compliant.
sampo · 5 years ago
> This isn't even GDPR compliant.
Our World in Data in run by Oxford University, so outside of EU. The applicability of EU GDPR laws outside EU is a complicated topic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula...
kjakm · 5 years ago
Although the GDPR is an EU Regulation it is incorporated into UK law and that hasn't changed since Brexit.
https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/dp-at-the-end-of-the-tr...
hellow0rldz · 5 years ago
It's not that complicated but if you are too small you don't worry about it.
If you are big (like this site here) you have lawyers so you also don't worry about it.
n_f · 5 years ago
lichess > chess.com
DoryMinh · 5 years ago
Why do you prefer lichess to chess.com?
wright08 · 5 years ago
Chess.com is super bloated, slow to load, and hard to navigate. There's so much noise on the screen compared to playing on lichess. Features are paywalled. For example if I want to know how the top players are responding to a certain sequence of moves, I can just see that on lichess. Also weird stuff is locked like using your own computer to analyze games. Also if you haven't been to the site for awhile you get a lovely modal again asking you for money. It's not that getting paid for services is bad, it's just awful when there's a better quality free service.
V-2 · 5 years ago
Yes - not only features are limited and paywalled (fine, you need to keep the lights on), but they're nagging you about buying a subscription at every turn (now this feels intrusive to me).
Their UI also feels clunky and dated: kind of like a 90s, or early 2000s desktop app.
They do offer much more features, but most of them aren't even remotely essential to me: like a bazillion of bizarre chess variants (lichess has a few simple alternatives, but no stuff like 4-player chess etc.), or "personalized" bots to play against ("play against Beth Harmon"; it feels very Disneylandish to me), and so on.
This being said, I don't mean to bash chess.com, it has certain advantages, and I do play on both websites. Still, lichess is my go-to, no-nonsense, default option.
Petrova · 5 years ago
chess.com consistently lags for me why Lichess does not. I often lose completely winning positions because of the lag.
greyman · 5 years ago
I use both, but what is chess.com better at is that they have grandmasters there you can learn from. That's the advantage of the commercial model - you can use the money to push things to a higher level. But overall I am on lichess more, since I can play crazyhouse against the computer there. :-)
peter_retief · 5 years ago
I just had a quick game, thanks for keeping this going, I can donate a very small amount monthly, how do I do that?
peter_retief · 5 years ago
Found the link its done.
CynicusRex · 5 years ago
dna_polymerase · 5 years ago
Case in point, Slate Star Codex advertising used to be quite good. I remember it had these riddles from Jane Street, who where looking for people to hire this way.
Also, because the ads were somewhat long running they weren't as intrusive and attention seeking like ever changing ad spots by Google or something. Saw them once, didn't bother me ever again.
mproud · 5 years ago
Always good to see. (I’m tired of seeing ads everywhere too!) Bravo.
Though, I disagree on the restaurant analogy. Not being open-source isn’t the lack of willingness to share the ingredients. It’s choosing not to share the recipe, which is almost every restaurant.
inferense · 5 years ago
This is a bummer. As much as I love lichess, I think there's a beautiful array of opportunities of monetisation which I believe would be nothing short of wrong incentives. Value-based monetisation (instead of restriction / ad based monetisation) might as well motivate the team to maximise that value for the user.
Just a couple of examples (for which I'd be actually willing to pay for)
1. Stockfish, server-side game analysis, learning from mistakes 2. Deep individual analysis based on XY games, practicing on weak spots, openings etc. with stockfish 3. Their practice library
Again, all of these are super valuable to those who want to take their game to the next level, don't see why anyone in that segment wouldn't pay for this. The "entertainment" feature of lichess which is the chess itself should be free indeed.
thomasahle · 5 years ago
> 1. Stockfish, server-side game analysis, learning from mistakes
I'm not sure what you mean by 2 and 3, but lichess already has server side analysis.
If it's just that you'd like to pay for it, you can set up donations. You can also contribute your own server to the analysis cluster.
Lichess is a really inspiring project on how a free/open source software community can provide the same value based features that we normally assume can only be done by monetization.
yesenadam · 5 years ago
> beautiful array of opportunities of monetisation
I think that's the first time I've seen "beautiful" and "monetisation" in the same phrase.
sireat · 5 years ago
I love Lichess (13k+ games and counting).
It is a worthy alternative to chess.com model . There should be room for both.(chessbase.com, ICC, FICS are lesser alternatives now)
That said this low pressure model only works when you are a lean shop(single developer proficient in Scala) AND have millions of users.
Running a lean shop might be an admirable goal but millions of users is not for every project.
There are thousands of worthy open source projects which struggle to give their creator sustenance through donations.
The exceptions are few(Vue comes to mind).
V-2 · 5 years ago
"(chessbase.com, ICC, FICS are lesser alternatives now)"
I'd say that the main competitor of the two is now Chess24.
It follows the subscription/premium model, taking it even further than Chess.com. Eg. the latter doesn't require you to be a paid user just to export a pgn of your own game - but Chess24 does.
V-2 · 5 years ago
I meant the *former. Chess.com gives you access to the game record at least (even if its analysis functions are limited for free users). Chess24 doesn't
yesenadam · 5 years ago
Chess24 also has I think by far the best output of free chess videos on youtube.[0] My two favourite chess channels are chess24 and chess24 en español. e.g. I'm about to watch the Candidates tournament right now on there, with Judit Polgar commentating and live video. The first few days had Magnus Carlsen (!) commentating.
chess24 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkTCNuQ2mGfW6-SpHpaze_g/vid...
en español https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTzRQxC3i7GOT4jtiTq4e0w/vid... (Divis, el Fo, Niño Anton etc)
For years I played online a lot, but I gave up playing (it's too easy to play all night!) and just watch tournaments. Also banter blitz, on the chess24 channels, with e.g. Dubov, Grischuk, So, Radjabov, Karjakin, Nepo etc etc, not to mention Magnus, is amazing—hearing first-hand how the strongest players think. It's not always fun playing chess, but it's always a lot of fun watching! Every second.
[0] St Louis youtube channel, except for major tournaments, which they do very well, is super-lame compared to years ago when Yasser, Ben Finegold etc were regularly doing video lectures.
qyi · 5 years ago
Just for clarification, are you talking about Vue.js?
Just looked it up and people actually donate thousands of dollars to a JS project?
https://opencollective.com/vuejs
Crazy.
ComodoHacker · 5 years ago
I can praise their stance, but one critical point left unaddressed is sustainability.
paduc · 5 years ago
If donations are enough to pay for all costs (including a salary for the developer), I can't see how you could say it is not sustainable.
ComodoHacker · 5 years ago
Yes, after rereading the article I've found this info. At first reading I was expecting a separate section and missed it.
almavi · 5 years ago
So many comments failing to grasp the idea of someone wanting his job/passion to be publicly available at the cost of him not getting rich. So sad.
9387367 · 5 years ago
HN is most US based, that’s one of the richest countries on earth where their citizens suffering from epilepsy wear bracelets to warn others not to call an ambulance.
yesenadam · 5 years ago
I believe the majority on here arent from USA, if that's what you meant.
harperlee · 5 years ago
???
So is someone calls an ambulance and they provide you a service without you being conscious, you are liable to pay? What on Earth?
cmeacham98 · 5 years ago
Yep, welcome to the US. Bonus points for the fact ambulance rides usually cost thousands of dollars and aren't covered by most insurance plans.
dang · 5 years ago
Taking HN into nationalistic flamewar is exactly the wrong thing to do here and we ban accounts that do it. Please keep this sort of off-topic flamebait off this forum.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
By the way, HN users were about 50% in the US, last time I checked.
scaladev · 5 years ago
What else did you expect on a ~~hacker's~~ founder's site? Make a billion and retire before hitting 20, that's the goal.
almavi · 5 years ago
The ability to understand and praise (although not share) someone else's goals in life!
jperry · 5 years ago
I'm not sure when "hacker" became a synonym for "ruthless capitalist" but it's sad to see, honestly.
mattplm · 5 years ago
Also a lot of people don't realize that he is getting rich with that salary in rural France.
dang · 5 years ago
That is not even close to how this thread turned out.
Would you please not post low-quality disses like this? They break the site guidelines, like this one:
"Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
- and they lead to extremely low-quality discussion, as seen below.
almavi · 5 years ago
I'm sorry, will do in the future. Thanks for the comment.
dang · 5 years ago
Appreciated!
Noos · 5 years ago
the problem though is what happens if he gets sick or needs to move on, or the passion fades? Now you need to hire someone who may not be motivated in the same way, and if compensation is low for the duties entailed, you won't get what you need.
It's not good to undervalue work because you really rely on the gift of the worker to keep the project going.
9387367 · 5 years ago
Would be interesting to see how much money the people here saying Lichess shouldn’t be free or should serve ads, have actually donated to Lichess if they use the site and are so concerned with their sustainability.
Lichess has been live for over a decade, they are a proven success.
greyman · 5 years ago
I like lichess, it is my first go to website to play chess, but for-profit models also have their advantages. For example in chess.com, they pay grandmasters to be there, and one can learn a lot from grandmasters. They earn money, and invest them back so the site can be even better. So I think neither model is wrong, or inherently better than the other.
almavi · 5 years ago
You almost sound like the world champion don't usually play on Lichess.
casion · 5 years ago
He plays there sometimes, but not usually.
gokhan · 5 years ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQ6prlKz3aQ
Carlsen, on Lichess, against other GMs and FMs.
aloisdg · 5 years ago
When you have to pay someone to play on your platform because they prefer to play on another one.
philshem · 5 years ago
The world needs Libackgammon!
patrickdavey · 5 years ago
Fibs.com ?
S4M · 5 years ago
You can make it! There is already lishogi.org for shogi (Japanese chess) and lidraughts.org for draughts. They took the code for lichess and tweaked it for their respective games.
philshem · 5 years ago
I probably can’t, but I could put up some seed money and set up a non-profit.
cableshaft · 5 years ago
Thank you for pointing out this out and making it click in my head that what they're doing could be done for other games.
I've got one or two game designs of my own that I could probably make something like this with, but it didn't really click I could use this code as a reference until then.
S4M · 5 years ago
Well, good luck for your endeavors and please let me know (email in my profile) if you need a beta tester or early user.
cableshaft · 5 years ago
Will probably be a while before that happens, if it happens, but I'll put down your email just in case.
I do have other game designs I'm working on and a different version of the game I'm thinking of that is aimed at a bit more of a casual audience (even putting Twitch streamer friendly things in there), but I do hope to get to a point where there can be some real data on how to play well in the game, and it is basically a board game anyway (I have a physical prototype for the board game version made, but it's never been published).
kthejoker2 · 5 years ago
In a simple 2x2x2 matrix of
* product aimed at specific audience / general audience
* product is "one big idea" / a lot of little ideas
* product requires long term engagement / short term engagement
Only "specific audience" / "one big idea" / "long term engagement" can expect to - indeed, must - thrive on patronage.
The 7 other boxes are beholden to their users' fickleness.
brainwad · 5 years ago
Wikipedia would seem to be general audience / big idea / short-term but survives on patronage.
ece · 5 years ago
And it's not immune to editor and user fickleness.
kthejoker2 · 5 years ago
True! :)
I guess if your idea is "big" enough to attract an audience approaching the entire human civilization, you can survive short-term engagement :)-
sssilver · 5 years ago
How much of Wikipedia’s annual budget is actually paid for by companies like Google?
vixen99 · 5 years ago
This was not the best of examples - 'Imagine if scientists kept the result of every scientific study to themselves.'. Given that most science is funded ultimately by taxpayers either directly or via money borrowed on their behalf by governments, this would be an indefensible position aside from demonstrating an ignorance of how science progresses.
joelthelion · 5 years ago
Being funded by tax payers doesn't prevent most research from being published behind a steep paywal at no benefit for the researchers...
MaxBarraclough · 5 years ago
The more full quote:
> Imagine if scientists kept the result of every scientific study to themselves. The same work would have to be done over and over again as everyone was forced to reinvent the wheel countless times to do anything at all.
Computer scientists do exactly this, as it's possible to publish while withholding your source-code. This is harmful not only in that effort is wasted reimplementing published algorithms, but also in that the reader is deprived of the ability to check the source-code for bugs that might impact the published results.
This topic has cropped up before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24261706
lavp · 5 years ago
Lichess is truly on a class of its own. It delivers a better service than any of it’s alternatives (in my opinion), and it’s actually 100% free with no BS.
Funny enough, I’ve donated around $30 in total which is $30 more than I would’ve ever thought of spending on a chess site. Hats off to thibault and the open source community for creating such a wonderful gem.
dav43 · 5 years ago
Likewise, I found myself donating because - for me - it’s generated great value.
heinrichhartman · 5 years ago
Just donated $30 myself. I use this site every week. It's such a great product!
Here is the direct link: https://lichess.org/patron
PS: I also donated a few month of CPU time to fuel their Game Analytics a while ago: https://lichess.org/help/contribute
ycombinete · 5 years ago
I donate a tiny $5 a month. Not bad for a service I use everyday.
Another way to help is to host an analysis server[0]. I give them one core of my old i3-5100. It’s easy to setup, and I like knowing that it’s chugging away 24/7.
chengiz · 5 years ago
In case you're using paypal, it seems paypal takes 9% of that $5, see their costs spreadsheet posted elsewhere here. If you can, try donating bigger amounts less frequently. The fee goes down to 3% at ~$60.
alisonkisk · 5 years ago
Donate annually or one lifetime gift do the money goes to the recipient instead of the finance industry.
loevborg · 5 years ago
Just donated $50 - after 2500 blitz games, that's only 2 cents a game.
kohlerm · 5 years ago
Great post, especially being open about the costs is great information. Lichess is amazing!
jek0 · 5 years ago
> So why are there ads on websites? There is only one purpose they serve: to make money.
If there are things that could make Lichess way better but require resource they don't have, they should weight the pros and cons.
The cost is a worst user experience. The benefit is money.
For a non-profit, money is a mean and not an end. Resource will be used to achieve a purpose. Maybe in some cases the benefit can outweigth the cost.
tangjurine · 5 years ago
There's a cost breakdown, but no information I found on how much income the site brings in... Curious.
tangjurine · 5 years ago
Actually, on the lichess forum two years ago one of the volunteers stated that costs ~= revenue. So I'm guessing that the main developer salary is mostly the "excess".
oytis · 5 years ago
Would be great to have a search engine or a registry board for non-monetized subset of web.
luke2m · 5 years ago
Lichess is one of those examples where the open source alternative is actually the best and most well known.
V-2 · 5 years ago
I do prefer lichess, but is it "most well known"? If we measure it by the number of users (what else), chess.com dwarfs it really.
luke2m · 5 years ago
At my school anyway
ipaddr · 5 years ago
The most well known products are the ones with the biggest marketing budget. In order to get that marketing budget they have to extract value from each user.
eloisant · 5 years ago
Thibault Duplessis is actually an ex co-worker of mine, and this guy is truly impressive.
Not only he is a very talented developer, he really sticks to his beliefs and made what Lichess is today.
He used to take up a job for a year or so, save money, and travel the world for a year or so until money runs out. Then he would come back to France and take up a new job. All working on Lichess during his free time.
For a few years now he has enough donation to pay himself enough money for his expenses, while he could have been a startup millionaire if he had decided to take a different path.
But he proved that you can have a successful non-profit, free of charge, free from ads service. Not just source code, but an actual service hosted with millions of users.
We need more people like Thibault.
kome · 5 years ago
I love absolutely everything about this. Thank you for sharing his story.
Free/Libre software has been built thanks to principled people like him. It's truly a collective effort. And corporations started to slowly eroding it from within.
phoinix · 5 years ago
He may as well be a millionaire in the future. By having a platform that people use you do get a minimal amount of bug fixing and stability of the platform. Lichess is a platform for companies to use it for their purposes with some tweaks here and there it can be an education platform, a platform for engineers to practice the internals of machines and many more possibilities.
Joomla is open source and their devs make so much money selling plugins and widgets. Who is the best man for the job to tweak the platform than the developers who made the open source core of it?
I use lichess everyday for years, the stability of the platform is absolutely top notch. An absolute minimal amount of bugs, no glitches in the website, every page i click on, loads instantaneously. The commercial website Chess24 and closed source, doesn't have "ultrabullet' games, very quick games of 15 seconds, because their platform cannot support it. lol
aaronax · 5 years ago
I think the "plugins and widgets" path to making money easily ends up being detrimental to the original free thing. Instead of spending time just improving the thing, one ends up carefully planning out what can acceptably be broken out separately, how to make the thing extensible, billing, advertising, funneling...just all kinds of garbage.
Eventually you end up with a load of staff who are dependent on the thing for their livelihoods, and that influences decision-making. Next up is selling to a company with big resources "to empower us to complete the original vision" and soon after a new scrappy upstart releases their free alternative, to start the cycle again.
phoinix · 5 years ago
Very true, the vision of the system may alter a little bit, if in the future there are commercial sponsors. Every new version will have to be more conservative, so as not to break compatibility, development will slow down, more bureuocracy etc.
I think the future of education is portraying it as a game, history as a game, engineering as game etc and solving puzzles along the way. Lichess as a platform may be useful in that regard, because a game to be enjoyable doesn't need to have all the fancy 3d graphics.
bluedino · 5 years ago
Joomla. Have not heard that name in a very long time.
ArtWomb · 5 years ago
I can think of no better compliment: Lichess is the site, the eternal game of chess deserves.
CyberRabbi · 5 years ago
Do you know how many children he has? That would be the easiest way of getting more people like him.
SamPatt · 5 years ago
I understand your point, but children are not guaranteed to be like their parents, and many gifted people are actually poor parents.
CyberRabbi · 5 years ago
In general children are more likely to be like their parents than non-children. That’s the rule, of course there are exceptions.
beebmam · 5 years ago
A way to have more people like Thibault is to make it so the cost of living is extremely cheap, if not totally guaranteed. A society creates its people.
medium_burrito · 5 years ago
Yeah, a Portland or Berlin where one can retire young with low cost of living and do cool stuff...
reedjosh · 5 years ago
/s ?
mey · 5 years ago
As someone living in Portland metro right now, either it's /s or misinformed. Portland hasn't been cheap since maybe 2010, maybe earlier depending on your definition. It may be cheaper than San Francisco, but certainly not cheap.
reedjosh · 5 years ago
Same.
Gaelan · 5 years ago
I read the comment as "a city like Portland, but…"
hellbannedguy · 5 years ago
I do agree, but most people want a lot of money. They might say they just want some protein in their noodles, but deep down they are a Zuck.
It seems like every financially successful developer out there came from a middle/upper class enviornment.
Once they smell money, it's always more, more, and more. If the get big enough they blame it on their shareholders?
Guys like Thibault are a different breed. They are rare. I have a feeling his payoff will be huge in the future, and it will be a combination of respect, and a fulfilled guilt free life.
I don't feel like arguing. Their must be few Horatio Algers out there banging away, and just want a comfortable life. It just seems like most people that's never ever enough once they get the whiff of financial opportunity. I truly believe Zuckerburg could have had a legitimate shot at running for president if it wasn't for greed. (He pondered running a few years ago with calculated photo op trips to the midwest.)
andrepd · 5 years ago
I don't think so. If there's one thing history shows is that the vast majority of people just want to live a serene life with comforts, but not necessarily luxury.
LordDragonfang · 5 years ago
>It seems like every financially successful developer out there came from a middle/upper class enviornment.
I think this is more likely evidence of how many advantages being brought up in those environments gives in becoming financially successful. Not having to worry about paying for college, for example, leading to having more seed funding to be able to start working on your own projects, and potentially even having relatives provide that funding directly.
Even then, only the greedy find major success. Make the cost of living lower, and you see more successful people, specifically more guys like Thibault who are willing to do thinks the right way.
middleclasswhat · 5 years ago
Where do you live that the middle class doesn't have to worry about paying for college? I grew up somewhere between working and middle class and by the time I got accepted into a state school my folks had earned just enough money to report to FAFSA that I didn't need aid -- but they had no significant savings with which to send me. Despite my father being a traditional engineer my whole life, and my mother had a career in social work.
I worked to pay for my tuition, and like many millennials, discovered this was insufficient, and had to take out loans. Eventually the financial exposure was too great so I dropped out because I couldn't afford it anymore and found a job writing code
And now I'm middle class, myself.
But I'm middle class for flyover country. If you don't have to worry about paying for college, because your parents can afford it out of pocket, I've got news for you: you're not middle class. You're RICH.
randoramax · 5 years ago
> Where do you live that the middle class doesn't have to worry about paying for college?
Europe, most likely... You know, those socialist countries where there is still a middle class.
johnsimer · 5 years ago
Zuck'd have a shot at running if he had more than three facial expressions.
feanaro · 5 years ago
I truly cannot fathom why anyone would Zuckerberg as their president.
atat7024 · 5 years ago
Everyone's just looking for someone they can trust so they don't have to read and actively discuss things.
orestarod · 5 years ago
What you wrote reinforces the point of the comment you answered to, according to mine and I guess most users' here views.
aabbcc1241 · 5 years ago
If you develop for a niche you care about, even not for profit, it shouldn't be hard to cover the bill (along with other day job). I'm doing so but in small scale so far.
fersho311 · 5 years ago
What an inspiration! I’m doing more or less the same with c0d3.com
Been working on the learning community for about 5 years now.
I’ve saved up enough for a year, will be quitting In 2 weeks to go back to teaching and improving the experience and teach more students about good engineering practices.
huevosabio · 5 years ago
Lichess is _impressive_ in itself. I was blown away when I found it was FOSS. Kudos to Thibault.
andrepd · 5 years ago
> We need more people like Thibault.
What we need is a system that incenctivises people like Thibault, rather than incentivise people to develop nastier ways to make people click on ads :)
_pfxa · 5 years ago
Enable, not incentivise. Incentives are there, curiosity, community, gratification, etc. What people lack is the financial security to do nice things untainted with commercial interest, even in modern countries with proper welfare.
1337shadow · 5 years ago
Impressive to see a French spending his own money between jobs, instead of using the advantageous unemployment salary in France!
torgian · 5 years ago
I used to have a coworker named Thibault, I wonder if this is the same guy.
everyone · 5 years ago
Read that as "Why Liches will always be free"
teachingassist · 5 years ago
If Lichess is a French Charitable Association, why do its (very clear) terms say that we agree to follow the laws of England and Wales?
https://lichess.org/terms-of-service
This seems rather an odd arrangement. Does anyone have any insight here?
almavi · 5 years ago
Good question!
brainwad · 5 years ago
Because English contract law has a reputation for reliability, thanks to the common law doctrine of stare decisis, which binds courts to decide the same way as previous cases with the same facts were decided (modulo appeals courts). French law, by contrast, gives much more freedom to judges to decide each case individually, which sounds nice in theory, but in practice just creates legal uncertainty for everyone involved.
As to why English law, and not, say, New York or New South Wales law, well: England is only 21 miles from France.
codethief · 5 years ago
> but in practice just creates legal uncertainty for everyone involved.
Citation needed. Both civil law and common law seem to have their respective pros and cons. At least my understanding of common law is that in common law you need to be familiar with all past related cases dating back to who knows when, which doesn't exactly make interpreting and understanding the terms of a contract any easier.
sixstringtheory · 5 years ago
It seems common sense enough that no citation is required.
Get a judge having a bad day in France and your case could go belly up regardless of merits, customs or precedent.
“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” So why retread the same legal wheel over and over? Why not study prior similar cases to at least see if they thought of something you didn’t?
codethief · 5 years ago
> Get a judge having a bad day in France and your case could go belly up regardless of merits, customs or precedent.
You're spreading FUD. 1) Few civil actions are decided in a day. 2) You can almost always appeal a decision. 3) Statutory law in Civil Law countries tends to be much more detailed and comprehensive (compared to statutory law in Common Law countries), precisely because no one likes to "retread the same legal wheel over and over", so law makers at some point decided to codify what already was (or was supposed to become) common practice. So judges have much less wiggle room in their decision than you and OP are implying.
This is also the reason why "commercial agreements drafted in civil law countries tend to be rather brief […] since there is no reason to restate codified law"[0].
teachingassist · 5 years ago
Is this a standard arrangement, then?
Is it usual for French organisations to apply English law?
eplanit · 5 years ago
"Would you buy a meal if the restaurant refused to tell you the ingredients? Would you buy a car if you weren’t allowed to look under the hood?"
Ok, but I'm not buying the website, just using it.
xipho · 5 years ago
This is glorious: https://lichess.org/features. Love the side by side comparison :).
crazypython · 5 years ago
People often forget the freedom to modify or hire someone to modify for you is an important part of open source.
cdelsolar · 5 years ago
I made a site heavily inspired by lichess (specifically AGPL, no ads ever, free forever), but for crossword board games (think Scrabble, Words with Friends, etc). You can see it here at https://woogles.io
It has been growing steadily and we're about to hit 400K games played; it's the site of choice for the streaming community and we just finished hosting the World Blitz Championship this past week :)
Thibault is sort of my hero. We've talked about doing some sort of cross-promotion but I'd like to polish our app a bit more before I follow up again.
earthscienceman · 5 years ago
I wish you the absolute best of luck. If this notion/method of operating community platforms takes off, the world will be far better for it. Imagine if the average human's interaction with the internet were open free (both as in beer and as in idealistically) platforms that encouraged social collaboration, personal interaction, and community formation. Wikipedia, Lichess... maybe woogles. It could easily be an impetus for social change in the meat-flesh world. Even more powerful if it seeps into "real" social media platforms. It sounds like a revival and reformation of the diverse community diasporas around during web 1.0.
... so much better than the vision for the future coming from the powerful technocrats living in silicon valley, the primary users of HackerNews. The future is for the people.
dang · 5 years ago
> the powerful technocrats living in silicon valley, the primary users of HackerNews.
That's a serious misperception. Only about 10% of HN users were anywhere near SV, last I checked, and the vast majority of those aren't "powerful technocrats".
I frequently see comments like this setting up (or expressing) barriers between the commenter and the rest of the community, when the truth is that the community is mostly just like themselves. I think it's important to realize this. How can we function as a community if people are suspecting and/or putting down everybody else who's here?
earthscienceman · 5 years ago
Hi dang, thank you for taking the time to point that out. I think you are touching on something that's important to understand and overcome. I realized that my wording was poor as I thought more about my comment and you are correct to call me out. I'll try to be as honest/open/guidelined in my response as possible to bare fruit from an aggressive comment.
While it might be true that the demographics of the site are 10% SV residents, I do sense a very existent divide here in the interests of the users of this site. And while my initial comment might not have perfectly followed the guidelines, I do often think it's important to push-back against the "money-above-all" culture that often steers this website, or at least the culture that underpins a lot of the discussions.
I think, as the site is founded by a VC firm, there is inherently a large subset of users that are money driven technocrats. And more substantially, I think the resulting culture is a barrier to the actual substance of discussions here and to the impact of discussions/technology/startups/VCs/etc in general. And I broadly disagree with the perspective on community, society, money, and finance that the founders of YCombinator espouse. Views that are also shared by a portion of the user-base here.
Let me label these two communities that I believe there is a barrier between: "FOSS-ers" and "startup-ers". I hope these labels are transparent enough that I don't even need to clearly define them. Thus, what I think that I'm trying to comment on, is that there is a real divide between these communities. Is there common ground? Absolutely. Am I willing to tolerate the "wealth-at-all costs" attitude that is pervasive here? Absolutely not. I think it's toxic and damaging to civil society and I think we're bearing that out at this exact moment in time. And I see HackerNews as an awkward, sometimes beautiful, ground-zero.
Now, to be expressly clear with my position: I'm not anti-capitalism. I wouldn't even call myself a socialist. After all "socialism", as the word is colloquially used in the Anglo world (aka European EU-style socialism), is really just capitalism where some of the taxes are expressly earmarked for broad reaching social programs. I believe in competition and I believe in providing rewards to the people who are willing to take risks and create things in the world. I think that's fantastic.
But I am suspicious of some users here. I think the actions of many VC firms, YC startups and their founders, and the resulting discussions on HN, border very often on anti-social. I don't believe Paul Graham's hypothesis that large sums of wealth aggregated via consumer capitalism is best used by VCs to create good in the world. It's typically used to acquire more wealth via blind consumer-oriented companies, with the occasional benevolent passion project. That wealth in the hands of a sufficiently/correctly motivated government, an institution created to serve the people, would create far more good and is a much better place for that money.
I quite plainly believe that much more good would be created in the world using technology if these people had stricter morals, less money, and less selfish goals. I also believe that their wealth is inherently oppressive, as it bequeaths power to be even more selfish... and motivates others to follow suit. Something I think should be discussed here on this website.
--------------
Now, I know that I'm riding the lines of the comment guidelines here. I know that this is pretty close to an ideological battle. But I hope that I'm closer to "curious thoughtful and substantive conversation" about ideologies on HN than I am to fulminating. I suppose I'll find out in your response.
Thanks for all your effort here dang.
granshaw · 5 years ago
Interesting that you’ve had no replies yet
I actually feel like there’s a lot less readers from the VC/entrepreneurship crowd on HN than in the early days (or maybe they were never a big percentage to begin with)
Feels to me like by far most of the readership here is your typical 9-5 salaried tech worker who has never engaged in entrepreneurship nor has any desire to
Granted within that group there might be a lot in the “VC camp” that glamorize VC/startup culture and values
dang · 5 years ago
Sure, HN has subgroups like FOSS-ers and startup-ers (I think those are fair names). Another I'd mention are the internet mavens, the connoisseurs of online communities who think a lot about them and know about their history. I think the boostrapping/indiehacker subgroup is distinct from all of these again. And there are others. All are welcome.
> I know that this is pretty close to an ideological battle. But I hope that I'm closer to "curious thoughtful and substantive conversation" about ideologies on HN than I am to fulminating.
I agree! I'd avoid rhetoric like "The future is for the people" though - internet forums like HN are just not good places for declaiming. It comes across as blaring, sort of like using a megaphone in a living room. But the reason I replied above was not because of any of that. It was because of "the powerful technocrats living in silicon valley, the primary users of HackerNews" and especially the word "primary". That is empirically inaccurate and I think it's part of my job to help this community get a more accurate reflection of itself. So many commenters feel like they have to distance themselves from the rest of the community—or rather, from their image of the rest of the community. Sometimes this comes across as supercilious, sometimes as defensive, but it's the same underlying phenomenon. I think it's a large, significant problem that we need to work on in order for HN to be the kind of place we'd all prefer.
Btw I wrote about that here last year, if anyone is interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098.
earthscienceman · 5 years ago
Thanks for the link, I'll read it this evening.
I appreciate the correction of primary, I agree it's an unnecessary broad characterization. I also understand your concern with the "distancing" you're referring to, however:
I think there's a subtle line between being willing to engage with someone the way you speak of and tolerating behavior that is socially toxic. If there's something I feel like has been learned over the last 30 years, it's that some portion of the population (the term "privileged" is often used here) are enabled by society to be deaf in their actions and the impacts of those actions on others. Whether the "privilege" causing their deafness be power that is rooted in money, race, or simply being member of a majority in some sense... the impact is the same. They need to be hit over the head with the mirror of what they are creating and, yes, sometimes that action is a bit emotionally violent. Or, in your language, sometimes that requires creating a characterization/image of their actions which can sometimes look similar to what you are calling distancing. I think the unfortunate simple difference between being unnecessarily divisive in your commentary (which I think is a summary of what you're asserting I've done) and calling people out for their bad behavior... is simply whether your characterization of their behavior is accurate or not. I hope I'm being fair and accurate and I think you've done a good job in pointing out the ways I was not.
hooande · 5 years ago
I think part of what dang was saying is that there is generally no need to characterize the motivations and beliefs of your fellow posters. Your comment would have been fine without that. Meta discussion about the community itself can be valuable. But this post is about lichess and the merits of ad driven revenue models.
It's also worth saying that most of the people here are developers, academics and general nerds. You might want to pay more attention to the replies on the major posts to get an idea of where people are coming from. You might also benefit from a closer reading of what the current leadership of YCombinator have said recently. Lot of sustainability and basic income there.
It looks like you've created a straw man that you hate very much. It's like trying to blame all of "America" for the perceived evils of capitalism. The entire hackernews community is too big and too diverse to be your opponent in that debate.
earthscienceman · 5 years ago
I'll try to keep my reply short.
I read a lot of the conversation here every day and I've read a lot of the statements from the current leadership of YCombinator. And I think it's a gross attempt to undermine the discussion by asserting that I must not read anything because I could only be so wrong if that were true.
While I understand your comment that HN is a diverse site, and you are very correct there, I am not trying to make all of HN my opponent in this debate. I'm very plainly, although maybe I did poorly, hoping to make an opponent of a specific -- and in my opinion very common -- mindset on HN. With the goal of deconstructing it and ideally maybe even dismantling it.
To that end, I don't agree at all the YC leadership is doing a meaningful job of actually addressing sustainability via their practices as a business. I have read the words that you're referring to, which IMO are aimed at discussing sustainability. However, their practices are in direct opposition to those ideas. The startups they fund, the businesses they push to IPOs, and the monologues that they write on their blogs are far-more-often-than-not geared toward one goal: making money and expanding YC and the reach of tech related businesses, IMO without much regard for the impact it has on the world. I recognize that this is an opinion, and you pretty obviously aren't sympathetic to it, but it's fairly empirical in terms of substantive projects that YC has pushed hardest financially/philosophically. It's also empirical in terms of the replies on major posts, particularly the entrepreneurial ones.
And because you've implied this is off topic on a post about lichess, I should also clarify: I see the goals and accomplishments of lichess to be worth even more when juxtaposed against these YC culture. Especially knowing that someone like ornicar faced a very real choice when deciding to pursue lichess as his primary endeavor. I think he deserves to be applauded not only on his own, but also in that context. I also think it's no coincidence he is from France. Les français sont beaucoup plus à l'aise dans l'idéalisme, il me semble.... surtout par rapport aux américains. Mais pourtant ça sert aussi à créer son propre ensemble de "problèmes uniquement français"
fragmede · 5 years ago
Have there been any posts doing analysis of the demographics of this site? And if not, could a data scientist come in, visiting professor style, and do one? I think it would be fascinating!
(link just goes to guidelines site which does not discuss demographics)
dang · 5 years ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16633521 comes to mind but is already 3 years old.
tux1968 · 5 years ago
My sister plays a lot of scrabble so I am happy to be able to share your site with her.
If I can be so bold as to offer one criticism of your site though, it was a bit confusing when I first clicked to look at it. The first page is a barrage of information none of which seemed relevant for my first visit. I clicked the links at the top of the page and ended up on completely different web sites with equally confusing first pages.
Eventually I did click and watch a scrabble game being played, which looked great!
cdelsolar · 5 years ago
Appreciate the thoughts - thank you! We will pass your comments on to our designers :)
exikyut · 5 years ago
I just had a look at the site myself having read the GP comment. The layout felt reasonably unambiguous and accessible to me personally, although everyone's different - but then when I clicked a game and wanted to go back to look at another one, I noticed that my browser's back button was disabled!
Sure enough, a global search showed that you're using history.replace() to change the URL path. I can totally appreciate the likely trepidation about the work required to correctly juggle the JS history stack, but... it's very disorientating to see the back button greyed out :)
I know it'll get fixed eventually, but I crashed into it within 6 seconds. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Also, it would be kind of cool to be able to watch active games, but the current UI doesn't really surface activity in any way. Adding this would naturally attract ebb and flow and interesting oscillatory behavior (with lots of people randomly joining and leaving) and whatnot, but it would also allow for actual large-scale spectation, and the general appearance of a site that's a Destination™ and a flurry of activity.
(While probably obvious, I've just thought that recency (what's being played right now), activity (what's attracting the most chat and the most frequent/periodic/consistent movement), and volume (what has the most eyes on it) would all play a role in ranking.)
pbhjpbhj · 5 years ago
Presumably the owners of the trade marks you just referred to (Scrabble, etc.) are onboard [no pun intended!] with you? Otherwise I see tortuous infringement court cases in your future!?
I thought Mattel only allowed their own online games to be called "Scrabble" RTM.
Disclaimer: this is personal opinion and relates in no way to my employment.
0xffff2 · 5 years ago
>Disclaimer: this is personal opinion and relates in no way to my employment.
I see this quite a bit on HN and I always thing it's silly, but this time it's particularly perplexing. Are you a lawyer for Mattel or something?
pbhjpbhj · 5 years ago
I somehow knew someone would ask and mentally prepared a response!
My employer thinks I shouldn't comment on social media at all because people might think I'm commenting in an official capacity. Their line is "don't use social media", so if there's a comment where an argument could be leveled against me that "people think this is a part of your employment" I indemnify myself against that argument.
It's not unlike acknowledging the owner of a trademark, no-one can soundly claim people would think you own a mark if you point out you don't and name who does.
I don't work for Mattel, fwiw.
kixiQu · 5 years ago
It's not silly only in proportion to your employer's aggression on the topic.
Perhaps there needs to be an account disclaimer checkbox as a standard feature: "I speak in no official capacity related to any employer or professional role"....
0xffff2 · 5 years ago
It's silly because most employers have no ability to match "0xffff2" or "pbhjpbhj" or "kixiQu". To a person in the real world.
I've never identified myself as an employee of my company on this account and I'm certainly not identifying myself as an employee of my company in this post, so since I don't work for the NSA, I post whatever I want, no disclaimer necessary.
If for some reason I did want to identify my employer sometimes, it would make infinitely more sense to make a separate account for those times than to attach a meaningless boilerplate disclaimer to every single post I make on Hackernews.
pbhjpbhj · 5 years ago
I'm pretty confident I could be doxxed (email me if you like!), I don't really want to play the game of proper anonymity (throwaway on Tor-Browser over an sshuttle "tunnel" is about as far as I'd go but that would be getting pretty silly; hopefully it'll never happen, if it does I hope my disclaimer will be enough to argue unfair dismissal; who knows.
kixiQu · 5 years ago
Oh you can definitely put together where I work in a few Googles. Not everyone cares equally about maintaining pseudonymity; the boilerplate isn't meaningless if your employer is explicitly requesting it as a CYA.
chucksmash · 5 years ago
It'll still be silly then, it'll just be technologically enshrined silliness!
I work at a company with a social media policy. My understanding of it (garnered by clicking through the slides as quickly as humanly possible once a year) is that they only want me to consider these sorts of disclosures if I'm speaking in a capacity where people MIGHT mistake what I say as coming from the company.
My employer is certainly discoverable from my HN account but there's no more value in me adding such boilerplate to my HN posts than there is me signing emails with my mom the same way.
cdelsolar · 5 years ago
We play a crossword board game named OMGWords - I only mentioned Scrabble, etc. to explain what I meant by a "crossword board game". The _rules_ of this game are compatible with those of the Scrabble(R) Brand Crossword Game.
zestros · 5 years ago
Any plans to allow the use of your site without a login? I'd like to play with my family but getting them all to create an account would be too difficult.
cdelsolar · 5 years ago
We have heard this a few times, and the backend supports it, but we need to make a few changes in the front end to make it happen. I think we'd like to do this in the future.
bspammer · 5 years ago
This is brilliant, just being able to spectate high ELO scrabble games is unreasonably entertaining. The kind of words these people come up with is crazy.
I know lichess invests a lot of energy into catching cheaters, is that something you've had to look into? I imagine it's much harder to catch cheaters than in chess.
cdelsolar · 5 years ago
Yes, we actually have come up with some algorithms for flagging cheaters, and then a small team of experts reviews the games in question. The algorithms are the only part of the site that is closed source at the moment; if we move over to machine learning we may open them (I think of something like Irwin).
The algorithms have been successful at catching a nontrivial number of cheaters already, most of whom have admitted it and gotten their account back after a suspension.
It is a super cool problem - I think we can catch more with machine learning (the funny thing is, my day job is in fraud detection using machine learning, so there is some overlap :)
porphyra · 5 years ago
Yes!!! Finally --- it is about time that someone made a modern alternative to isc.ro which is full of security problems (e.g. passwords stored in plaintext; your rack is randomly generated on the clientside) and looks ugly.
olah_1 · 5 years ago
On the mobile site, I couldn’t find any information on what the game is or how it works.
Maybe add more of a header section to explain the game or have a picture of what it looks like in a game?
blastro · 5 years ago
can't say enough good things about lichess. we almost don't deserve it!
neweraccount · 5 years ago
Sorry if this question is off topic. What is the seemingly random characters in blog url "../YF-ZORQAACAA89PI/..". Does it have any significance in article or blog management? For all blog articles from lichess I see this.
Eduard · 5 years ago
Is this a chess website?
Nothing in the news nor the interface mentioned chess.
cushychicken · 5 years ago
Love that his posted description of lichess.org is "a hippie communist chess server for drug fueled atheists" lol
ece · 5 years ago
Lichess is great and they mention FICS in one of their blog posts as a great way to play too: https://lichess.org/blog/WrbfjyYAAMOualZ5/our-favourite-open...
They also mention kfchess, which I didn't know about, and other open source educational, puzzle, variant chess sites and the lc0 engine based on AlphaZero.
Ecco · 5 years ago
I read that as "Why Lichees will always be free". That would have been fun :-)
Jeff_Brown · 5 years ago
Why we can't make this unfree, or why it would never be in our interest to make this unfree, are a lot more convincing than why we promise this will always be free.
boatsie · 5 years ago
I love the sentiment but you often see these promises broken, so I won’t hold my breath. Imagine someone offers him a billion dollars for the site. Do you really believe he would refuse and hold to these promises? Would you?
sealeck · 5 years ago
(a) capitalism means that people are unlikely to offer him $1 billion for the product
(b) doesn't this assumes that having $1 billion is much more valuable than being an instrumental part of an online community which brings so much happiness to so many people
(c) wealth has diminishing returns (in terms of material circumstances) and the person who runs this doesn't seem to be after power
29athrowaway · 5 years ago
There are forks of lichess for other games.
- lidraughts.org
- lishogi.org
a_lieb · 5 years ago
Here's a business model for successful open-source projects—one that's already in use, but I think is rarely seen as a business model per se. I'd be interested to see if there's a blog post or the like about this already.
If you're the head of a successful OSS project and you believe it's helping your career in the way of industry notoriety, good demo work to show potential employers, etc.—then give a cut to cover the project's expenses, or even hire folks for freelance work.
There might be stretches when you're not going to make any extra money from the project; say you've reached the point where the project isn't a top line-item in your resume and is probably not responsible for your next salary bump. You can still honor what you've gotten from the project by voluntarily investing back a portion of the money. It has a "benefit corporation" flavor.
If this sounds like too much generosity to expect of people, consider people like Thibault. He's very, very deep into the "generous" side, in that pretty clearly he could work on the project _far_ less and still get a dream job. What I'm describing is a way to make an overall profit and still feel like you're giving back to the world by nurturing the project you've built.
Obviously, this is an overwhelmingly common thing in practice already, whether it's someone who made an OSS project to get a good job and then continued to work in their spare time to maintain it, or language BDFLs who maintain the project on a volunteer basis, but as a result of founding the language they have amazing and well-paying day jobs. But so far I've never seen it described as an actual business model, where you can feel great about helping to keep up your project, but still come out ahead overall.
cableclasper · 5 years ago
Brilliant and powerful statement. Kudos to Lichess. But this part:
> Imagine if scientists kept the result of every scientific study to themselves. The same work would have to be done over and over again as everyone was forced to reinvent the wheel countless times to do anything at all. Instead, scientists share their work and collaborate which benefits all of us.
raised my eyebrows. If only it were true. Aside from paywalled journals, we don't have a centralized repositories of data in most fields, probably because a lot of it is proprietary (or intends to be) in the first place.
skoocda · 5 years ago
Thibaud's comment almost seems sarcastic- given the extent of the replication crisis [0].
Zebfross · 5 years ago
It is noble, but I disagree about ads. Maybe there are products that chess players would be genuinely interested in that a company would be willing to pay to have advertised. It can be completely customized to be tasteful and unobtrusive, and users may even be thankful for it. On Wikipedia I’d way rather have tasteful ads than the half screen request for donations.
neop1x · 5 years ago
I agree with OP and disagree with you. People are different. I hate ads and I rarely buy products via ads. More often I use friend recommendation or product reviews/comparisons. I don't want to see ads when I am not planning to buy something.
thelean12 · 5 years ago
> users may even be thankful for it
That's really just something we tell ourselves to feel better about serving ads. It doesn't actually match reality.
ineedasername · 5 years ago
They'll never get to unicorn status with that attitude.
Heck, they have no moat! Anyone can just walk in, use their source code, and set up their own free chess site!
I'm sure this is all great for chess lovers and the game of chess as a whole, but what about all of the investors who will never have the thrill of a 10% IPO pop?
It just seems kind of selfish to make such an amazing site and then not try to cash in on all that value.
thisiswater · 5 years ago
Psychopathic not to extract value for shareholders indeed.
fredros · 5 years ago
They should switch license to sspl or bsl!
musicale · 5 years ago
> There is absolutely nothing positive about advertisements on websites from the perspective of their users. They eat up valuable screen space and bandwidth for something that nobody wants to see. They often manipulate and misinform. They have even been the source of security vulnerabilities many times in the past.
It's weird that web advertising is utterly terrible and toxic but I am actually nostalgic for print ads from Fry's Electronics (rip). They were one of my favorite parts of print newspapers.
Old computer magazines also had great advertisements.
leowoo91 · 5 years ago
https://database.lichess.org is where all game data is stored and indexed fyi
encryptluks2 · 5 years ago
When something requires you to sign up it is no longer free. This is free as in Facebook.
sabujp · 5 years ago
You could literally donate $5 to lichess and that would provide enough funding for more games than most people would ever play in a lifetime ($0.00021 per game, thats 23809 games at $5) : https://lichess.org/costs
craggy · 5 years ago
Since Lichess is open-source, I'd love to see an Arimaa app built from it. That would be awesome, since arimaa.com is really geared towards desktop use.
SagelyGuru · 5 years ago
Lichess is so good that I spent more time there than I probably should have.