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Hey you know, it’s a good thing! This helps you not be attached to the past, and let’s be honest here… people make things for money, not love or art. Otherwise

Hey you know, it’s a good thing! This helps you not be attached to the past, and let’s be honest here… people make things for money, not love or art. Otherwise they wouldn’t copyright it.

tsol 4y ago
I'd argue people make things for money AND love. It's just the money you need to survive, and the love is just nice and fulfilling-- so you can guess what people end up hyperfocusing on
- postingposts 4y ago
  Uh, it’s not love if you’re doing it for money. It’s work. You might enjoy the feeling of getting paid but that’s not love.
  - colejohnson66 4y ago
    It’s possible to enjoy doing something, and realizing you can make money on it after
    - postingposts 4y ago
      Yes that’s called enjoying making money. It’s not love. Why is that confusing to so many people?
      - oriki 4y ago
        Because if the thing I'm doing is, for instance, making artisan screwdrivers, I don't spend my whole day making money. I spend my whole day making screwdrivers. If I love making screwdrivers, then I love making screwdrivers. Now that I have all these real nice screwdrivers lying around, I can sell them to other people who might want a really nice screwdriver. Not only did I get to do the thing I enjoyed doing: making screwdrivers, but I also made some money off of it. Some of that money can be used to cover cost of materials on the screwdriver I made, the rest of it can be used to enrich my personal life, or maybe grant me access to stronger tools to do the thing I enjoy doing. Making something and selling something are two different tasks. I can love making things and still sell those things for a profit, and my love for making things can have absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I get money out of it. Where do you get the presumption that you can't possibly do something good that you like and still make money off of it?
  - anyfoo 4y ago
    You never had a job that you enjoyed?
    - postingposts 4y ago
      I would like to say yes but the reality is no. If you would like to talk about it I don’t mind. I have decided that I’m going to engage people on a more limited basis because no one seems to want actually discuss the topic at hand.
    - tshaddox 4y ago
      At every job I’ve had there have been days where the alarm goes off and I’d rather stay in bed than go in that day. Even if there are other days I enjoyed the job, the money is the reason I go in on the days when I’d rather not.
munificent 4y ago
> people make things for money, not love or art. People make things for all sorts of combinations of various amounts of money, love, and art. The idea that motivation must be purely extrinsic or purely intrinsic is false and toxic. It demeans paid work and discourages people from seeking meaning in their jobs.
- postingposts 4y ago
  It’s my perspective. I think that money is toxic and demeaning. You won’t change my perspective on that.
  - munificent 4y ago
    You're certainly welcome to your perspective. You can also choose to apply it to other people. But that doesn't magically make it their perspective or motivation. Saying, "I don't like mint chocolate chip ice cream" does not spontaneously cause sales of it to plummet across the world.
matheusmoreira 4y ago
> it’s a good thing! This helps you not be attached to the past What an interesting way to spin into a feature the copyright industry's inability to give people what they want. You know what else is a good thing? Emulation. Amazing thing. > people make things for money, not love or art. Otherwise they wouldn’t copyright it. Not only is this false, it's a huge factor in authenticity and quality. We want creators who have an intrinsic drive to create, who something to say, who have a vision they want to realize, who would create regardless of profits. Nobody cares about cheap cash grabs. The money is meant to enable their creations.
- postingposts 4y ago
  “ The money is meant to fuel their creations.” I’ve never seen this in practice. It’s usually to fuel buying some big house that no one normal could ever afford and then acting like you were granted a lordship. I am more than happy to change my perspective but not to have a headache by deluding myself that “everyone just has to take profits!” Maybe that’s the world you live in. I don’t want to live in it.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - bduerst 4y ago
    This is survivor bias. Investment into information property (IP) goes unseen because you only ever publicly see what happens after the success. Without a legally guaranteed return on investment on IP, investment into developing it would be stunted. Now is usually when someone counters with open-sourced initiatives, but they themselves still have copyrights legally protecting how they are used after being developed.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - postingposts 4y ago
      Ok but that’s assuming I have empathy for investors; I do not.
konfusinomicon 4y ago
the past is soooo addictive though. its money that they could still be making.. they should syndicate it, like Seinfeld
- postingposts 4y ago
  See that’s actually a brilliant idea. Have a series of products, actors, musicians, and sign them all together onto similar platforms. I bet Amazon could do it. You would only see these actors using these certain types of products and appearing in movies where the action or entertainment incorporates product. Presenting The 90s, brought to you by Amazon. Beige computers, everyone has the same hairstyle, small town Americana! I think most people are tasteless enough to really like this.
  - deadbeeves 4y ago
    "Taste" is just a way to divide personal preferences into arbitrary acceptability categories so that some people can have an excuse to look down on people who don't share their preferences, while giving it a facade of legitimacy.
oriki 4y ago
> people make things for money, not love or art. ...you're on Hacker News. A significant portion of this website is just people talking about Open Source Software, something that consistently produces case studies about people making things for love or for art or for passion instead of just for money. Plenty of people make things for value that isn't purely financial. > Otherwise they wouldn't copyright it. This isn't how copyright works, at least in the US. Generalizing broadly, you own the copyright of whatever you create unless you've otherwise signed that away. It's automatic. You don't fill out a form to have copyright over a work.
- postingposts 4y ago
  “ ...you're on Hacker News.” Am I? I know that’s the name but it’s not really for hackers. It’s mainly for businesspeople who are very sensitive, don’t really know much of anything beyond their desk job or coding and don’t care much for the hacker ethos. If I post like myself, really like myself, that is, extremely weird and sarcastic, I’ll get the Socrates/Voltaire/Diogenes treatment and be shown the door. I think people like to call themselves hackers, or pirates, or “code ninjas” —- it is escapism from the truth that they no longer do it for the love, it’s for the money, or they are doing it for the job, the prestige, the “do you know who I am?!” Effect. Which I don’t care about cuz I’m a hacker. I didn’t get your fancy 4 year degree. I’ll write your code dude but I’m not going to fawn over wealth like it’s valuable because to me it isn’t. I’ve seen many people get sensitive or bristly attitudes here, report the post, downvote, because they don’t have much to say or engage with. They disagree, and that’s it. I am “man you disagree with” and “bad man” because you disagree.
  - oriki 4y ago
    I'm not even going to bother with the first two paragraphs here - you're mostly just going on about how you don't like the people on HN and don't think they're real hackers and then you're deploying a massive and wide ad hominem against HN's readers. Luckily, I don't really identify with them all that much either -- in fact, I actually have a lot of recurring issues with HN's readership, but I'm saving that for another time. The simple truth here is this: I don't have a four year degree. I don't even write code for a living. I work in IT, in a role that you would probably best describe as just 'IT guy.' I don't make more than $60,000 a year in the role I'm currently in. I care about money to the extent that I need money to live, to feed my car gas, to feed myself food, and to feed my computer at home electricity. You're getting the cold shoulder here because you don't seem to have the nuance to understand how people actually interact with and care about their work. I feel like we live in a nightmarish hellscape where a significant portion of work is driven by nothing but desire for profit, but this doesn't suddenly make me think that everyone involved in making things is only there because they get paid. On the other hand, you appear to think any person who sells anything is going through this whole process purely for money. The replies to you have been perfectly amicable, and encourage discussion. YOU have been shutting that discussion down because people don't agree with you.
boondaburrah 4y ago
eyyy good troll
- postingposts 4y ago
  I’m going to respond to you directly and clearly. I dislike posts like this: they’re low effort and accusing someone of ill behavior because they have an opinion you don’t share is a cheap shot at best. I’m trying to be charitable here and I’m finding it unenjoyable because no one is apparently willing to have a serious discussion if we aren’t all constantly agreeing. You really can’t imagine how disappointing it is and how little it makes me want to engage in the future.
  - Shared404 4y ago
    Well said. On mobile at the moment, but will edit on my pc later to fix formatting if I remember. I'll be up front - I do disagree with your take, at least partially. I quite like the screwdriver analogy used elsewhere in the comments. I love working with computers. I have for years. Recently, I turned that into a job. I enjoy my job, though I wouldn't say I love it. However, it does allow me 5o practice and learn, so that I can improve my skills when I do perform a labor-of-love project. If I were to make a labor of love project, and then someone were to pay me to support it, why would that project atop being a labor of love? There would be extra workload that would not (billing, other business cruft, etc), but I think the core of it would be. Similarly for art/music - if I producea song because I like writing music, and people are willing to pay for a high quality download, would it stop being a labor of love at that point? Curious to hear your thoughts on these edge cases.
    - postingposts 4y ago
      Feel free to disagree again: I think you’re either being unclear with your definition of enjoyment and love, or you are perhaps confused between the two. Which isn’t to say you aren’t having positive feelings at your job, I think that’s possible and in general ideal. Enjoyment out of spending more time the way you want to as opposed to the way others have dictated it be spent is very natural, I believe. But I have to draw the distinction between love and enjoyment. Love (to me) is the expression of an idea from the soul, and the willingness to nurture this idea from the perspective of nature and harmony. There is a harmony in creating order (code, poetry, music), and there is a harmony in creating a roughness around which order and harmony form. (Clouds, fractals, abstract ideas, natural patterns) to experience this as the self with the world and with others in the world is how I believe love exists and comes to be. When you’re paid for this process it diminishes love with the element of time, and space. You have to do it by so and so time, or there will be a material consequence. (Even if the time is very far away) I don’t think that your labor of love becomes undone, but it’s something else. It’s enjoying the fruits of your labor, and that is not the same as laboring for love. Not to me at least. I even would say you can enjoy making things others love. But for you yourself, it’s not possible. And for me, in practical experience, I don’t get many who love what I do, and I don’t really enjoy the climate around me full of people doing nothing but stacking up money for no purpose. I suppose my real gripe here is that I wish things were good or meaningful.

Hey you know, it’s a good thing! This helps you not be attached to the past, and let’s be honest here… people make things for money, not love or art. Otherwise they wouldn’t copyright it.

tsol 4y ago

I'd argue people make things for money AND love. It's just the money you need to survive, and the love is just nice and fulfilling-- so you can guess what people end up hyperfocusing on

postingposts 4y ago
Uh, it’s not love if you’re doing it for money. It’s work. You might enjoy the feeling of getting paid but that’s not love.
- colejohnson66 4y ago
  It’s possible to enjoy doing something, and realizing you can make money on it after
  - postingposts 4y ago
    Yes that’s called enjoying making money. It’s not love. Why is that confusing to so many people?
    - oriki 4y ago
      Because if the thing I'm doing is, for instance, making artisan screwdrivers, I don't spend my whole day making money. I spend my whole day making screwdrivers. If I love making screwdrivers, then I love making screwdrivers. Now that I have all these real nice screwdrivers lying around, I can sell them to other people who might want a really nice screwdriver. Not only did I get to do the thing I enjoyed doing: making screwdrivers, but I also made some money off of it. Some of that money can be used to cover cost of materials on the screwdriver I made, the rest of it can be used to enrich my personal life, or maybe grant me access to stronger tools to do the thing I enjoy doing. Making something and selling something are two different tasks. I can love making things and still sell those things for a profit, and my love for making things can have absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I get money out of it. Where do you get the presumption that you can't possibly do something good that you like and still make money off of it?
- anyfoo 4y ago
  You never had a job that you enjoyed?
  - postingposts 4y ago
    I would like to say yes but the reality is no. If you would like to talk about it I don’t mind. I have decided that I’m going to engage people on a more limited basis because no one seems to want actually discuss the topic at hand.
  - tshaddox 4y ago
    At every job I’ve had there have been days where the alarm goes off and I’d rather stay in bed than go in that day. Even if there are other days I enjoyed the job, the money is the reason I go in on the days when I’d rather not.

munificent 4y ago

> people make things for money, not love or art. People make things for all sorts of combinations of various amounts of money, love, and art. The idea that motivation must be purely extrinsic or purely intrinsic is false and toxic. It demeans paid work and discourages people from seeking meaning in their jobs.

postingposts 4y ago
It’s my perspective. I think that money is toxic and demeaning. You won’t change my perspective on that.
- munificent 4y ago
  You're certainly welcome to your perspective. You can also choose to apply it to other people. But that doesn't magically make it their perspective or motivation. Saying, "I don't like mint chocolate chip ice cream" does not spontaneously cause sales of it to plummet across the world.

matheusmoreira 4y ago

> it’s a good thing! This helps you not be attached to the past What an interesting way to spin into a feature the copyright industry's inability to give people what they want. You know what else is a good thing? Emulation. Amazing thing. > people make things for money, not love or art. Otherwise they wouldn’t copyright it. Not only is this false, it's a huge factor in authenticity and quality. We want creators who have an intrinsic drive to create, who something to say, who have a vision they want to realize, who would create regardless of profits. Nobody cares about cheap cash grabs. The money is meant to enable their creations.

postingposts 4y ago
“ The money is meant to fuel their creations.” I’ve never seen this in practice. It’s usually to fuel buying some big house that no one normal could ever afford and then acting like you were granted a lordship. I am more than happy to change my perspective but not to have a headache by deluding myself that “everyone just has to take profits!” Maybe that’s the world you live in. I don’t want to live in it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bduerst 4y ago
  This is survivor bias. Investment into information property (IP) goes unseen because you only ever publicly see what happens after the success. Without a legally guaranteed return on investment on IP, investment into developing it would be stunted. Now is usually when someone counters with open-sourced initiatives, but they themselves still have copyrights legally protecting how they are used after being developed.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - postingposts 4y ago
    Ok but that’s assuming I have empathy for investors; I do not.

konfusinomicon 4y ago

the past is soooo addictive though. its money that they could still be making.. they should syndicate it, like Seinfeld

postingposts 4y ago
See that’s actually a brilliant idea. Have a series of products, actors, musicians, and sign them all together onto similar platforms. I bet Amazon could do it. You would only see these actors using these certain types of products and appearing in movies where the action or entertainment incorporates product. Presenting The 90s, brought to you by Amazon. Beige computers, everyone has the same hairstyle, small town Americana! I think most people are tasteless enough to really like this.
- deadbeeves 4y ago
  "Taste" is just a way to divide personal preferences into arbitrary acceptability categories so that some people can have an excuse to look down on people who don't share their preferences, while giving it a facade of legitimacy.

oriki 4y ago

> people make things for money, not love or art. ...you're on Hacker News. A significant portion of this website is just people talking about Open Source Software, something that consistently produces case studies about people making things for love or for art or for passion instead of just for money. Plenty of people make things for value that isn't purely financial. > Otherwise they wouldn't copyright it. This isn't how copyright works, at least in the US. Generalizing broadly, you own the copyright of whatever you create unless you've otherwise signed that away. It's automatic. You don't fill out a form to have copyright over a work.

postingposts 4y ago
“ ...you're on Hacker News.” Am I? I know that’s the name but it’s not really for hackers. It’s mainly for businesspeople who are very sensitive, don’t really know much of anything beyond their desk job or coding and don’t care much for the hacker ethos. If I post like myself, really like myself, that is, extremely weird and sarcastic, I’ll get the Socrates/Voltaire/Diogenes treatment and be shown the door. I think people like to call themselves hackers, or pirates, or “code ninjas” —- it is escapism from the truth that they no longer do it for the love, it’s for the money, or they are doing it for the job, the prestige, the “do you know who I am?!” Effect. Which I don’t care about cuz I’m a hacker. I didn’t get your fancy 4 year degree. I’ll write your code dude but I’m not going to fawn over wealth like it’s valuable because to me it isn’t. I’ve seen many people get sensitive or bristly attitudes here, report the post, downvote, because they don’t have much to say or engage with. They disagree, and that’s it. I am “man you disagree with” and “bad man” because you disagree.
- oriki 4y ago
  I'm not even going to bother with the first two paragraphs here - you're mostly just going on about how you don't like the people on HN and don't think they're real hackers and then you're deploying a massive and wide ad hominem against HN's readers. Luckily, I don't really identify with them all that much either -- in fact, I actually have a lot of recurring issues with HN's readership, but I'm saving that for another time. The simple truth here is this: I don't have a four year degree. I don't even write code for a living. I work in IT, in a role that you would probably best describe as just 'IT guy.' I don't make more than $60,000 a year in the role I'm currently in. I care about money to the extent that I need money to live, to feed my car gas, to feed myself food, and to feed my computer at home electricity. You're getting the cold shoulder here because you don't seem to have the nuance to understand how people actually interact with and care about their work. I feel like we live in a nightmarish hellscape where a significant portion of work is driven by nothing but desire for profit, but this doesn't suddenly make me think that everyone involved in making things is only there because they get paid. On the other hand, you appear to think any person who sells anything is going through this whole process purely for money. The replies to you have been perfectly amicable, and encourage discussion. YOU have been shutting that discussion down because people don't agree with you.

boondaburrah 4y ago

eyyy good troll

postingposts 4y ago
I’m going to respond to you directly and clearly. I dislike posts like this: they’re low effort and accusing someone of ill behavior because they have an opinion you don’t share is a cheap shot at best. I’m trying to be charitable here and I’m finding it unenjoyable because no one is apparently willing to have a serious discussion if we aren’t all constantly agreeing. You really can’t imagine how disappointing it is and how little it makes me want to engage in the future.
- Shared404 4y ago
  Well said. On mobile at the moment, but will edit on my pc later to fix formatting if I remember. I'll be up front - I do disagree with your take, at least partially. I quite like the screwdriver analogy used elsewhere in the comments. I love working with computers. I have for years. Recently, I turned that into a job. I enjoy my job, though I wouldn't say I love it. However, it does allow me 5o practice and learn, so that I can improve my skills when I do perform a labor-of-love project. If I were to make a labor of love project, and then someone were to pay me to support it, why would that project atop being a labor of love? There would be extra workload that would not (billing, other business cruft, etc), but I think the core of it would be. Similarly for art/music - if I producea song because I like writing music, and people are willing to pay for a high quality download, would it stop being a labor of love at that point? Curious to hear your thoughts on these edge cases.
  - postingposts 4y ago
    Feel free to disagree again: I think you’re either being unclear with your definition of enjoyment and love, or you are perhaps confused between the two. Which isn’t to say you aren’t having positive feelings at your job, I think that’s possible and in general ideal. Enjoyment out of spending more time the way you want to as opposed to the way others have dictated it be spent is very natural, I believe. But I have to draw the distinction between love and enjoyment. Love (to me) is the expression of an idea from the soul, and the willingness to nurture this idea from the perspective of nature and harmony. There is a harmony in creating order (code, poetry, music), and there is a harmony in creating a roughness around which order and harmony form. (Clouds, fractals, abstract ideas, natural patterns) to experience this as the self with the world and with others in the world is how I believe love exists and comes to be. When you’re paid for this process it diminishes love with the element of time, and space. You have to do it by so and so time, or there will be a material consequence. (Even if the time is very far away) I don’t think that your labor of love becomes undone, but it’s something else. It’s enjoying the fruits of your labor, and that is not the same as laboring for love. Not to me at least. I even would say you can enjoy making things others love. But for you yourself, it’s not possible. And for me, in practical experience, I don’t get many who love what I do, and I don’t really enjoy the climate around me full of people doing nothing but stacking up money for no purpose. I suppose my real gripe here is that I wish things were good or meaningful.