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My wife runs an estate sale company, helping families dispose of property. Sometimes the family wants her to give something away. She hates that. It’s way more

My wife runs an estate sale company, helping families dispose of property. Sometimes the family wants her to give something away. She hates that. It’s way more work for her than selling it for even $1. She says, “There’s no one more entitled than someone you’re giving something to for free.” People responding to an ad for a free item will ask her to deliver it, load it, store it, repair it, and warranty it. My theory is that folks who seek something out because it’s free tend to have more time than money. And that means they don’t value time very much.

thephyber 2y ago
I believe Daniel Kahneman did a cognitive science study that pointed out similar concepts related to a day care that used to stay with kids after hours for free, then charged parents a fee for staying late, then removed the fee.[1] The core takeaway is that there is a stark difference in how people treat a social obligation versus a pay-transaction, and even attempting to switch back to the prior relationship doesn’t necessarily work. My experience is that friends and family frequently give things / items / services to the ones they love and feel social obligations / responsibilities to. I think Open Source Abusive Freeloaders think they are in this category with Open Source Maintainers, but Open Source is a strange hybrid of social obligation to people we have no friend/family/community relationship with, so some people are completely missing the expected behavior standards. Also interesting, I saw a high profile tech journalist Dave Winder) have a mini meltdown venting about a very similar abuse of his time by strangers on LinkedIn recently. [1] https://econlife.com/2018/09/unintended-consequences-from-fines/ https://econlife.com/2018/09/unintended-consequences-from-fi...
- sph 2y ago
  Sorry but the linked article shows the exact opposite phenomenon: when parents had to pay a late-arrival fee, the number of late parents noticeably increased. In open source the free-loaders are the entitled ones, expecting maintainers to move mountains to accomodate them. In fact, I am led to believe that they superficially look the same, but are very different phenomenons with very different results. I feel that the open source maintainer burnout is not driven by price, but by sheer scale of reaching so many "customers" worldwide of any type, which includes nasty people. If 1% of people are narcissists, and your modest library on GitHub is used by 100,000 people, you'll have to deal with 1,000 potential entitled idiots, which is very stressful for a non-paid volunteer job. I bet that if your library was sold for a nominal price, as your link shows, you'd get even more entitled users. The fact is that not many paid products reach as many users as any average open source project. Most of the world is much poorer than the Western countries, and their only choice often is open source.
throwaway2037 2y ago
There is an old joke. How do you get rid of a bunch of old junk that nobody wants? Most people would suggest to put it in front of your house with a sign that says: "Free". You will notice that almost no one takes anything. The solution? Change the sign to say: "Any item is X dollars". Then, people will quickly steal everything!
- akalsey 2y ago
  A co-worker mentioned they had a desk at the end of their driveway with a free sign on it for over a week with no takers. I told them to put a $10 sign on it and someone would steal it. It was gone the next morning.
tda 2y ago
This is also my observation. The cheaper I sell stuff on the local version of craigslist, the lower the quality of the buyers. No shows, non responsive to messages, whatever. I gave up on putting up stuff for free. The reason I put it up for free is that I value not having the item more than having it, so much more that I don't care about the 10 or maybe 100 euro that I could theoretically get for it. The idea is putting it up for free will let me quickly get rid of it, and instead of throwing something useful away, maybe someone will be happy with it. In practice this rarely works, I now much better understand why some people with limited time just toss out whatever they don't need. Getting it into someone else's hands is just too much work. The environmental impact is horrible though Another insight: whenever i donate my time fro free (volunteer work), my time is not valued at all. We start with a 30min coffee break with strangers I have no real interest in. Then a speech thanking so and so, and then someone starts preparing and finally after over an hour I can start contributing with whatever is the cause I want to help with. What a waste... If I charged my normal rate everyone would be prepared and make sure they make the most effective use of my hours. So this is such a paradox: people under value what is free, so giving something for free is not appreciated enough for me to do it. Final observation: I run a repair-cafe, and a very significant portion of appliances people come by with are cheap, ireppairable junk (often nespresso and senseo coffee machines, but also toasters etc). Im am suspecting that the people that buy more expensive coffee machines (the ones that are serviceable) are less inclined to actually take the time to repair it and just discard and buy new
- dolmen 2y ago
  > I run a repair-cafe, and a very significant portion of appliances people come by with are cheap, ireppairable junk (often nespresso and senseo coffee machines, but also toasters etc). Im am suspecting that the people that buy more expensive coffee machines (the ones that are serviceable) are less inclined to actually take the time to repair it and just discard and buy new Or the machines that are serviceable already have professionnal services that owner can reach and they will provide both repair and parts. The repair café is a last chance before junkyard.
  - tda 2y ago
neilv 2y ago
IME, listing stuff for free gets a lot of people who are cognitively impaired, such as by drugs or some mental illness. There may also be "choosing beggars", but they seem to be in the minority, and I'm not sure they're distinct from the more general group above. It also gets flippers (people who grab/buy things to immediately resell them), who are not at all impaired, but some of them are trying to maximize their profit. So if some of them impose, flake, deceive, etc., I get the impression that's all intentional, to make someone else bear their cost of their optimization. Ways I've found to avoid these people: (1) post to a free-stuff list of a nearby university, where it generally reaches penny-pinching students; (2) post on a public list, like CraigsList, but with an ostensibly nonzero price, then tell the person it's free; (3) put it on the curb with a FREE sign.

thephyber 2y ago

I believe Daniel Kahneman did a cognitive science study that pointed out similar concepts related to a day care that used to stay with kids after hours for free, then charged parents a fee for staying late, then removed the fee.[1] The core takeaway is that there is a stark difference in how people treat a social obligation versus a pay-transaction, and even attempting to switch back to the prior relationship doesn’t necessarily work. My experience is that friends and family frequently give things / items / services to the ones they love and feel social obligations / responsibilities to. I think Open Source Abusive Freeloaders think they are in this category with Open Source Maintainers, but Open Source is a strange hybrid of social obligation to people we have no friend/family/community relationship with, so some people are completely missing the expected behavior standards. Also interesting, I saw a high profile tech journalist Dave Winder) have a mini meltdown venting about a very similar abuse of his time by strangers on LinkedIn recently. [1] https://econlife.com/2018/09/unintended-consequences-from-fines/ https://econlife.com/2018/09/unintended-consequences-from-fi...

sph 2y ago
Sorry but the linked article shows the exact opposite phenomenon: when parents had to pay a late-arrival fee, the number of late parents noticeably increased. In open source the free-loaders are the entitled ones, expecting maintainers to move mountains to accomodate them. In fact, I am led to believe that they superficially look the same, but are very different phenomenons with very different results. I feel that the open source maintainer burnout is not driven by price, but by sheer scale of reaching so many "customers" worldwide of any type, which includes nasty people. If 1% of people are narcissists, and your modest library on GitHub is used by 100,000 people, you'll have to deal with 1,000 potential entitled idiots, which is very stressful for a non-paid volunteer job. I bet that if your library was sold for a nominal price, as your link shows, you'd get even more entitled users. The fact is that not many paid products reach as many users as any average open source project. Most of the world is much poorer than the Western countries, and their only choice often is open source.

throwaway2037 2y ago

There is an old joke. How do you get rid of a bunch of old junk that nobody wants? Most people would suggest to put it in front of your house with a sign that says: "Free". You will notice that almost no one takes anything. The solution? Change the sign to say: "Any item is X dollars". Then, people will quickly steal everything!

akalsey 2y ago
A co-worker mentioned they had a desk at the end of their driveway with a free sign on it for over a week with no takers. I told them to put a $10 sign on it and someone would steal it. It was gone the next morning.

tda 2y ago

This is also my observation. The cheaper I sell stuff on the local version of craigslist, the lower the quality of the buyers. No shows, non responsive to messages, whatever. I gave up on putting up stuff for free. The reason I put it up for free is that I value not having the item more than having it, so much more that I don't care about the 10 or maybe 100 euro that I could theoretically get for it. The idea is putting it up for free will let me quickly get rid of it, and instead of throwing something useful away, maybe someone will be happy with it. In practice this rarely works, I now much better understand why some people with limited time just toss out whatever they don't need. Getting it into someone else's hands is just too much work. The environmental impact is horrible though Another insight: whenever i donate my time fro free (volunteer work), my time is not valued at all. We start with a 30min coffee break with strangers I have no real interest in. Then a speech thanking so and so, and then someone starts preparing and finally after over an hour I can start contributing with whatever is the cause I want to help with. What a waste... If I charged my normal rate everyone would be prepared and make sure they make the most effective use of my hours. So this is such a paradox: people under value what is free, so giving something for free is not appreciated enough for me to do it. Final observation: I run a repair-cafe, and a very significant portion of appliances people come by with are cheap, ireppairable junk (often nespresso and senseo coffee machines, but also toasters etc). Im am suspecting that the people that buy more expensive coffee machines (the ones that are serviceable) are less inclined to actually take the time to repair it and just discard and buy new

dolmen 2y ago
> I run a repair-cafe, and a very significant portion of appliances people come by with are cheap, ireppairable junk (often nespresso and senseo coffee machines, but also toasters etc). Im am suspecting that the people that buy more expensive coffee machines (the ones that are serviceable) are less inclined to actually take the time to repair it and just discard and buy new Or the machines that are serviceable already have professionnal services that owner can reach and they will provide both repair and parts. The repair café is a last chance before junkyard.
- tda 2y ago

neilv 2y ago

IME, listing stuff for free gets a lot of people who are cognitively impaired, such as by drugs or some mental illness. There may also be "choosing beggars", but they seem to be in the minority, and I'm not sure they're distinct from the more general group above. It also gets flippers (people who grab/buy things to immediately resell them), who are not at all impaired, but some of them are trying to maximize their profit. So if some of them impose, flake, deceive, etc., I get the impression that's all intentional, to make someone else bear their cost of their optimization. Ways I've found to avoid these people: (1) post to a free-stuff list of a nearby university, where it generally reaches penny-pinching students; (2) post on a public list, like CraigsList, but with an ostensibly nonzero price, then tell the person it's free; (3) put it on the curb with a FREE sign.