January 4, 2026
Paywalls, chairs, and spicy code wars
Ask HN: In the real world we pay for everything so why not software?
If we pay for tables, why is code free? Internet brawls over paying devs and Apple’s “chairs”
TLDR: An Ask HN thread asked why we don’t pay for software like we do for everything else, igniting a brawl over free copies versus endless subscriptions. Commenters split between “code is copyable, so prices crash,” “big companies lock us in,” and compromise ideas like preorder-style funding.
Hacker News lit up over a simple question: we pay for everything in real life—so why not software? Cue fireworks. One camp went full economist, arguing software becomes a zero-marginal-cost product the moment it’s made—copies are basically free, so prices sink. Another camp roasted Big Tech’s “rent, don’t own” model, with a viral analogy: buying a table from Apple that only works with Apple chairs. People fumed that subscriptions turned software into an eternal monthly charge just to keep your digital ‘furniture’ from wobbling.
Meanwhile, the “I build both” crowd tried to calm things down. One dev said they sell some apps to pay bills but release free tools to “make the world a little better.” Others pitched a middle path: a preorder platform for software, like fashion brand weargustin.com but for code—pay up front, get the feature built. The spiciest spark? A commenter bluntly declared, “Software is easy,” which poured gasoline on the debate about value and labor. Jokes flew about renting forks and paying monthly to use your own chair, but the mood was serious: is code a commodity to copy forever, or craftsmanship you pay for like a carpenter’s time? The thread never settled—but it definitely sharpened the bill-vs-bonus fight over how developers get paid.
Key Points
- •Internet distribution makes the marginal cost of giving out code effectively zero.
- •Paid employment subsidizes developers’ free or open-source work, often driven by recognition.
- •Software is immediately useful, and pro bono coding is portrayed as easier than pro bono legal work.
- •The article claims software is “easy,” with return on capital outperforming return on labor.
- •The industry trend, exemplified by Microsoft, is toward selling hardware and compute with software bundled.