
Sourcehut Q1 2019 financial report - robertbalent
https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sr.ht-discuss/%3C20190426160729.GC1351@homura.localdomain%3E
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Sir_Cmpwn
Thanks for posting this, Robert! For those interested, I also posted the
monthly "what's cooking" today, which should give you an idea of the pace of
feature development and cool stuff since you last checked out sr.ht:

[https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sr.ht-
announce/%3C201905151603...](https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sr.ht-
announce/%3C20190515160338.GA6166%40homura.localdomain%3E)

I'm always available to answer questions, either here or at sir@cmpwn.com.

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erikpukinskis
I have a question! What's with all the preformatted widescreen text? Why not
just use plain text and let it wrap?

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Sir_Cmpwn
The text is formatted as it comes in. Most plaintext emails are hard-wrapped
at 72 columns and SourceHut doesn't molest them. However, there has been some
research into format=flowed, where the sender can opt-in to having their
emails reflowed on Sourcehut, but that hasn't been implemented on our side
yet.

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diggan
I love the transparency that this report brings. An honest report of what
happened, and what to expect going forward. Wish this was more common,
especially for companies that run a lot of the infrastructure for open source
and free software developers to use.

It seems to be a excellent start to a platform. But what worries me is the way
how the funding of the entire platform need to be sustainable, otherwise all
of the services within will eventually close and be lost. Instead of where
each service could have it's own funding, and people can vote with their
wallet which service to keep.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Hey diggan! The cost of each service is marginal compared to the collective
cost of running everything. Services which don't receive much interest are run
at a reduced cost by way of simply not being worked on, and the smaller volume
of traffic they receive reduces costs further - so it's a self correcting
system. If anyone wants to revive them, the code is open source and you can
send along patches to improve anything you're interested in. So far I think
this has worked pretty well! I also keep a line of communication open with the
users to make sure that I have feedback on what people like and where their
pain points are so I can prioritize my own work.

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zorked
FWIW: sr.ht is pretty cool, has a nice no-nonsense UI, and the build system is
really simple and powerful. It's not "done" but it works and is going in the
right direction. It's a very nice corner of the Internet. I've been using it
for personal repos and I'm really happy.

~~~
mtrn
I support sourcehut, because I would like to see it evolve, and hopefully keep
the no-nonsense UI approach. Having a nontrivial site with a usable interface
running without JS in 2019 is beautiful on its own.

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ianamartin
When I first saw this project, I thought it was interesting and signed up. But
I've never gotten around to using it. I don't remember what I thought the name
was when I read about it, but for some reason it got stuck in my head that the
sr.ht domain stood for "Sir Hat". And that's how I've always read it in my
head whenever I see it anywhere.

Sourcehut makes more sense.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I call it "Sir Hat" too, and I can tell you what made me read it like that:
the author/owner is 'Sir_Cmpwn on HN.

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rukenshia
I'm actively using[0] sr.ht with a paid membership. I really like the service
and the build system is super simple and easy to use, while fulfilling
everything I need for my private development. The owner has been super
responsive to feedback/issues. I encourage other people to try it out as well
and I am looking forward to see how this service grows.

[0] [https://git.sr.ht/~rukenshia/](https://git.sr.ht/~rukenshia/)

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albertgoeswoof
This is a great service but honestly the pricing is too low at $20/year.

You should change your professional plan, probably Mark it up 3-4x at least.
If professionals are using the service (ie they’re making money themselves
from it) some will pay $40/month for it. Just a few of those subscribers will
let you hit all your goals, work full time on it and let you keep the $2/month
plan out there in the long term.

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Sir_Cmpwn
Once the alpha ends and the beta begins, I'll have a chance to reconsider
these price points, and with data like this to back it up. It's expected that
payment will become mandatory at that time as well.

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majewsky
Chaos Communication Congress had (has?) a model where regular tickets were
priced very reasonably, and there were special "business tickets" that were
marked up by a factor of 5 compared to regular ticket prices. The only
difference is that you only get an invoice for a business ticket, so attendees
who have their costs covered by a company need the business ticket, while
individual attendees benefit from lower prices.

I don't know how invoicing works for a web service, but maybe that would be a
model to consider? Keep the low price point for individual users, but use a
lever like this to add some considerable markup for companies purchasing your
services.

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dagw
A while back the (large) company I worked for was evaluating two web service
companies, one was ~4 times more expensive than the other. They both had all
the functions we needed and from a practical point of view neither was better
than the other. However the cheap one could only be paid for by monthly
billing to a credit card and the expensive one was happy to send us quarterly
invoices. We went with the expensive one.

