Yeah yeah, everyone is entitled and we should think of those brave corporations who need to make money.
Seriously?
Look, when you give something away for free, you’re either a charity or you’re marketing your non-free tier products and using your large user base to drive premium users.
If a company has committed too much to their free tier and it is not sustainably driving premium users, I have little sympathy for them.
You did a marketing thing.
It didn’t work.
Sucks to be you. You are still not getting my business. I do not feel sorry for you when people lash you on Twitter and promise to leave.
There’s no reason to feel sorry for companys in this situation; it is a situation of their own engineering.
If you don’t like the product, don’t use it.
If enough people don’t use it, the conversion funnel will dry up and the company will change tunes (again).
The only thing to take note of here is, yes: if you’re not paying for it, you are the product. Feel free to grumble about it and call out these companies, but don’t be surprised about it.
> The common thread here: Lots of users expect to get things for free, forever, from for-profit companies that don’t answer to them. Those users contribute almost nothing1 to the bottom line for the for-profit companies, and actively drive up costs for them.
Please, spare me.
Those users are part of the conversion funnel to paid tier users.
Gitlab would not exist without them.
If they piss them all off and they leave, it will contribute, I’d wager, significantly the total evaporation of their bottom line.
Seriously?
Look, when you give something away for free, you’re either a charity or you’re marketing your non-free tier products and using your large user base to drive premium users.
If a company has committed too much to their free tier and it is not sustainably driving premium users, I have little sympathy for them.
You did a marketing thing.
It didn’t work.
Sucks to be you. You are still not getting my business. I do not feel sorry for you when people lash you on Twitter and promise to leave.
There’s no reason to feel sorry for companys in this situation; it is a situation of their own engineering.
If you don’t like the product, don’t use it.
If enough people don’t use it, the conversion funnel will dry up and the company will change tunes (again).
The only thing to take note of here is, yes: if you’re not paying for it, you are the product. Feel free to grumble about it and call out these companies, but don’t be surprised about it.
> The common thread here: Lots of users expect to get things for free, forever, from for-profit companies that don’t answer to them. Those users contribute almost nothing1 to the bottom line for the for-profit companies, and actively drive up costs for them.
Please, spare me.
Those users are part of the conversion funnel to paid tier users.
Gitlab would not exist without them.
If they piss them all off and they leave, it will contribute, I’d wager, significantly the total evaporation of their bottom line.