Ask HN: Why are so many great things free?
There seems to be an abundance of really great services that are offered free of charge, or have a free tier that fulfils my needs perfectly and offers no incentive to upgrade. Examples include Surge [0], Netlify [1], and Migadu[2], which I just discovered from the front page of HN. Why do so many services offer a really good product free of charge? Do they benefit at all, or is it about giving to the community?
[0] https://surge.sh/
[1] https://www.netlify.com/
[2] https://www.migadu.com/en/index.html
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By and large, my non-contribution to GNU and other projects is a lack of technical expertise. Beyond that it is mostly a function of not being embedded in a community of contributors. However, I'll admit that some small fraction of it is due to a lack of effort on my part.