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Some questions
Some questions
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If you come in any linux community and you say something like GNU/Linux is not free, because I have to buy a computer to run it, of course you're going to get bashed. It's exatly the same for NodeBB.
It's even insulting to the developers who provide the software and who worked hard for you for FREE. -
you really want to play with me, dontcha?
because using words and trying to define them is all this is.
you all must have got my point by now, but perhaps your rational minds can't allow my words to be right, because they don't fit in your (rather poor) definitions. or perhaps you're even consciously seeking some weird form of online satisfaction in literally trolling me.
no matter what i write here, you'll always be able to twist and keep picking on me.
but i'll bite. my masochistic self, that is. below is my last play on this topic for the foreseeable future.
here's a good source for defining words: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free
Freedom, generally, is having an ability to change without constraint.
and here's what "nodebb" really is: a brand.
A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.
i don't know (and i barely care) exactly how nodebb is capitalizing the brand (i barely care how any other brand does it, for that matter). but it is doing it in some way. it's selling the brand. for money.
sell it away.
i'm really glad at least you're not censoring this thread... even if you feel threatened by it for some reason.
if i can't use the nodebb service as a brand because i don't know how to host it, or because i don't have the money to pay for a host, then it is not free for me. i have no ability to use nodebb to make a change-without-constraint in my ability to use nodebb.
and that's what happens for at least 90% of people who might want to use nodebb for free. they just can't.
there are similar brands out there, doing similar efforts, and none are free in this way.
until one is.
and then it might become the only one (way back machine). or just the leading one (google). or the pioneer (orkut?).
my one paragraph in my first message which caused so much commotion in this thread was simply stating all this. and the other paragraph was me cheering for nodebb to be a pioneer in this aspect. even though my hopes for that actually happening were actually very low even before all this.
peace!
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@cregox said in Some questions
:no matter what i write here, you'll always be able to twist and keep picking on me.
No one has twisted anything. Not one bit.
You were crystal clear, no room for doubt. There's no question from the context what you were trying to say, and you verified it. You've been trying to twist your own words since, but no one has put words in your mouth. You were absolutely clear in your intention from the first thing you said.
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@cregox said in Some questions
:if i can't use the nodebb service as a brand because i don't know how to host it, or because i don't have the money to pay for a host, then it is not free for me. i have no ability to use nodebb to make a change-without-constraint in my ability to use nodebb.
This is, and we'll say this again, lying. Your inability to use something you've received for free does not change that it is/was free. Claiming that something that you were given as a gift wasn't a gift or free because you don't understand it or don't know how to use it or it isn't something else is just lying.
Saying that anything, NodeBB, WordPress, whatever, isn't free because something else, like web hosting, isn't necessarily free is false. You might as well say that NodeBB isn't free because they don't drive your car on your way to lunch - it's unrelated and to attempt to confuse someone by using such a deception is what lying means. You are saying something completely false, there's no excuse for this.
You need to just accept that NodeBB is free, as is all software under the GPL. There is no cost. If you want to pay someone to operate a website for you, that's fine and cannot change the fact that the software is free.
You are literally making the claim that if someone is given a hammer, for free, that they should complain when they don't also get someone to pound in the nails on their behalf, or to throw it through a window, or to do whatever it is you decide to do with it. The tool is free, the use of the tool whether free or not is not the tool itself. And it's a bit ridiculous to think that people here would be so easily confused.
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@Per0x said in Some questions
:@cregox Can you name an server app that is free according to your criteria?
He's backpeddle claim is that "nothing is free" and that the entire concept doesn't exist. Which is fine in a philosophical argument about the meaning of freedom or something. But here, he's intentionally attempting to confuse the OP by outright deception.
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@cregox said in Some questions
:until one is.
No, there is always a cost by your logic. Always. So when you say things like this, it exposes the lie.
The logic you attempt to use to excuse your lie in the first place is that the "use" of the product isn't necessarily free, so therefore the object isn't free. Okay, so let's use that logic to show how you can't have meant it.
Because now you claim it could be, but no one is. So this is an attack on "all products" that exist today, but theoretically you believe this could change. Well, but no.
You see because there is no end to what it takes to "use" a product. If NodeBB gave you free hosting, you'd claim that okay, but they aren't paying for your Internet access at home, so it's still not free. If they paid for that, you'd claim that the electricity for your computer, or the computer itself, at your home isn't free. If they paid for that, you'd argue that the chair, desk, or even the house wasn't paid for, so not free. If they continue to pay for that, you'd argue that they need to feed you and cloth you, but still, logically there's no reason to stop there, it's all the same as the hosting - not the product in question. In the end, the only way to make you happy that something is free is to not have you in the equation. Only when you are gone, and the person reading the site, commenting, etc. isn't you, is it free, to you.
But you see, we do all that already. So you see, it IS free. Even today. Because here we are, all using it, without you, and it costs you nothing. Did you notice? The software, the hosting, the stuff you were claiming wasn't free is... because this conversation is being hosted, managed, everything for free. It costs you nothing. The only thing that costs you anything, is your voluntarily participation and that only costs you the silly things like effort, food, electricity to use.
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@cregox said in Some questions
:it's selling the brand. for money.
But it's not. You can't paid them for the brand. Not only is it free (with an option to pay), it's only free. The brand isn't available for your use, but the product is. And the product is always free, there is no option to pay.
This is where we know you are attempting not only deception, but a defamation of NodeBB - because you will say anything, twist any word, meaning or whatever, to try to make people reading this feel that NodeBB is charging money, that it is somehow required. This is patently false. NodeBB is free. No twisting of words that you do is going to come up with some way to make it not be free. Calling a product a brand, claiming that is a charge when there isn't, etc. that's what "twisting words" is.
NodeBB is a product that you get for free. You only get it for free. They could, if they wanted, charge, but they don't. The fact that you get a thing with no cost whatsoever is the very definition of free. That you can use it however you want is the definition of libre. So it is free in both senses of the word.
In every case where you try to describe something not free, you both try to use NodeBB to refer to something that isn't NodeBB, and you try to claim that there is a fee where none exists. The degree to which your claims are false is absurd, it's not even like one could see how you are confused. It's so implausible that there is no means to provide a benefit of the doubt that you don't understand. You can't possibly be that confused about the concepts of what a product is, and what it means to be charged for something.
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@scottalanmiller So if I understood correctly, some free server app doesn't exist and can't exist, but he complains that NodeBB isn't free?
Actually, I think what he wants is not a free server app (what NodeBB is), but a free complete service. He wants someone to install NodeBB for him for free, hosting it for free on his server that he pays for him, and that way, he feels it's free.
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@Per0x said in Some questions
:@scottalanmiller So if I understood correctly, some free server app doesn't exist and can't exist, but he complains that NodeBB isn't free?
Actually, I think what he wants is not a free server app (what NodeBB is), but a free complete service. He wants someone to install NodeBB for him for free, hosting it for free on his server that he pays for him, and that way, he feels it's free.
I think what he wants is to promote the same product he promotes in nearly all of his posts. If you look at his history, he has never used NodeBB (he claims) but is constantly talking up another product (which maybe he uses, maybe he doesn't, I don't know) here to try to promote it - but not in an honest way (like saying that it's worked for him or whatever) but by constantly disparaging NodeBB through claims like it isn't free, or claiming that it's a fork of that other product (even though they don't share code or even code stack.) There's nothing that will make him happy, he's just trying to promote a lesser product that he can't come up with a value proposition for, or else he'd just make that.
Lots of people try this "it's not free" tactic to try to get people to not only give them one thing for free, but more and more things for free by trying to intimidate them. And some people are just trying to get free consulting, hosting, or whatever, but it doesn't look like that in this case. He's trying to make other people avoid the product by trying to imply that there is a charge somewhere for using it, when there isn't.
But the logic that he espouses means that no product could ever meet his criteria for free, because any effort, by any person - even just thinking of what the community would be - would constitute effort and therefore not be free. It's the "no such thing as free" argument, but used incorrectly because he says outright that there could be exceptions. The "nothing is free" philosophy is all or nothing. You can't argue it picking and choosing.
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@cregox said in Some questions
:it's as if @scottalanmiller is really voicing the other 2, that nothing i say makes any sense to you and you all jump into the worst interpretation possible
Just to be clear, because you are twisting this too, I did give you the benefit of the doubt. There are only two real options here. One is that you are being dishonest. The other is that you don't understand what you are saying and actually believe your logic works.
You must understand that to assume the former is, by far, giving you the benefit of the doubt. Acting like I'm being mean to assume you have good mental capacity is pretty twisted. I'm not, and have not, implied that you are confused or can't understand concepts like software, products, or paying money. If I was to assume you weren't lying, I'd have to assume those other things.
So again, a dishonest personal attack to try to make us look bad when, if we are being honest, giving you the benefit of the doubt is exactly what you are trying to defend against.
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Funny.... thread after thread of this guy talking up Discourse, lying about NodeBB and while it's not proof, his avatar does seem to appear somewhere suspicious...
https://i.imgur.com/EH5Cjwf.png
I take it the Discourse devs are seeing NodeBB as a major threat and their venture capital friends are pushing them to try to make the competition look bad because the product isn't drawing in the users like they'd hoped?
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Before the avatar gets deleted...
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@Per0x said in Some questions
:And here's the killer question. Is Discourse really free? Oh damn, no I have to host it, etc... Lol this guy's a joke.
Well I'll give him that one, he said no forum really is. But Discourse is GPLv2. It's truly free as well. Totally different code, even the license is different, but it's actually free.
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@scottalanmiller Yes sorry, Forgive me, I tried to think like him for a short moment.
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@cregox said in Some questions
:if it wasn't clear, yes, i meant free for using online as a free service
Just to be clear, in case anyone is confused by this... NodeBB is a software product, it is not a service. They are conceptually different things.
Like medicine is a product. Nursing is a service. You can get penicillin for free from bread, but if you want a nurse to inject you you might need to pay for the service.
Or like how an engine is a product, but installing an engine that you have already is a service. Nouns and verbs.
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Alright, I think we've beaten this horse to death at this point, no?
We could always spin off this discussion into licensing... we're GPLv3, but I do recall we've had discussions in the past about why we're GPLv3 and not v2... or why we're not AGPL... or why we're not MIT...
Well, it is what it is I suppose. The software is free as in libre (our hosted version is identical to our open-source version, save a single plugin we use for telemetry only on hosted versions), but it's also free as in free beer.
Except for the hosting and custom development, that unfortunately cannot be free (for a variety of reasons that I believe have been stated already)
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I, for one, will agree with @cregox that one could argue that NodeBB isn't free, because you're paying for hosting it.
However, in the same vein, none of the service he mentioned are. On Facebook you're paying with your privacy, by viewing ads AND you're paying for a device capable of running a web browser or a facebook app!
Same thing applies to basically all services like that. You can't escape paying for something down the road, though sometimes the price is your time and attention or your data instead of money
That's why usually to consider something to be free people only consider the price of that thing by itself, and not other things that you might need for your use of the product.For example - if you got a car without paying for it, would you not consider it free even if you didn't get lifetime supply of gas to go with it? I think most people would consider that car to be free.
Usually the same applies to software. Blender is considered to be free, despite requiring a powerful enough machine to run it which isn't free. You probably got your web browser for free - which is now basically taken for granted despite not having been common in the past - but you still need to pay for your computer, internet connection and electricity. And you most likely don't count these as a price of the browser.
Also, it actually is possible to host NodeBB for free.
Here is a quick example running on glitch: https://nodebb-example.glitch.me/
It's using free tier of MongoDB Atlas to store data, so the DB can grow to up to 512MB without incurring any costs. You can find the details, instructions and remix it here: https://glitch.com/~nodebb-exampleJust a warning that this hosting is far from perfect - it has quite a few limitations and while you can work around most (for example apps being put to sleep after around 5 minutes without connections - just use a service like uptime robot to ping it every 5 minutes), it's still probably only a solution for really small forums.
You can find a few other services that might run NodeBB for free on free-for.dev but I just wanted to test glitch so that's what I used.
There are some guides for heroku, though I'm not sure if they work with the free tier ¯\_(ツ)_/¯Hmm... I might check some other and create some guide on hosting NodeBB for free for small forums...
EDIT: also, just a note about this glitch instance - it has a few lines modified, though I'll have to look into it again since I was making the changes in the middle of the night, so I'm not entirely sure if the changes were necessary. But basically,
nconfwasn't correctly configured to use environmental variables in at least one file that can be used to start NodeBB.
I think I'll check it later and make a PR to fix thisEDIT2:
Oh, I wrote most of it before the last comment here, so I'll also have to disagree with @julian - hosting can be free (as shown here) and custom development can be free too if you do it yourself
(I mean, except the time spent on it...)And I'm actually net positive when it comes to spending money on hosting NodeBB, since the one bug bounty I got is still higher than what I spent on hosting NodeBB in total
