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What I Would Do If I Ran Tarsnap

(www.kalzumeus.com)
801 points tnorthcutt | 4 comments | 03 Apr 14 16:33 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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GBond ◴[03 Apr 14 18:34 UTC] No.7525005[source]▶
There is this hole-in-the-wall looking place in NYC chinatown that serves Chinese comfort food meal. It closes real late and remains affordable while serving great meals. It is frequented by Michelin star rated restaurant chefs (of all cuisines) for the after dinners hours mostly through word-of-mouth.

Now I'm certain that the owner of the place knows he can charge more and rebrand to the mass audience. But I'd like to think it is a point of pride that his successful peers enjoy his services and that trumps any desire to change from the status quo.

He is happy being Chef2Chef and I'm glad Colin is happy being Geek2Geek.

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ixmatus ◴[03 Apr 14 22:07 UTC] No.7527293[source]▶
I am not happy with it at all.

You know what he could do with the millions Tarsnap could make him? DONATE IT TO FREEBSD. How about that being Geek2Geek? How much more better off would the world be if Colin donated $500,000.00 of his surplus income from the business to the FreeBSD foundation? Or the Python foundation? Or THE FSF?

It's infuriating how blind many intelligent people are to how much better the world would be if they allowed more money. I don't care if that ends up being them buying a new house or donating it or building another amazing business or having the money to live while they write more amazing open source software.

What if by making more money Colin is able to start another business that does unknown and amazing things for cryptography! The possibilities are endless and makes me SO ANGRY that people with such amazing knowledge and skill that is so much more than mine are SQUANDERING IT BY THINKING THEY ARE DOING THE WORLD JUSTICE BY NOT CHARGING MORE MONEY!

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koenigdavidmj ◴[03 Apr 14 22:10 UTC] No.7527318[source]▶
If you are paying less, you can do all those things.
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1. HCIdivision17 ◴[03 Apr 14 23:03 UTC] No.7527681[source]▶
Patrick actually answers this point. The shorter is that while people are free to spend as they please to charities, businesses usually don't. He goes on to note that businesses have very different value structures. This means that while I may consider a hundred buck real money, an enterprise business very likely will not. The final bit is that businesses value some things disproportionately highly compared to the trivial cost of it. There are plenty of reasons for this that he makes clear.

But that value is for that service, not a charity. It will never get redirected otherwise. So getting a business to happily pay a large sum for a cheap service is a fantastic way to ensure you now have the money to donate, and likely an order of magnitude more.

This is also the reason he says to charge $500 a month, but to give away the service to them that need it. Because the business is effectively subsidizing the needy here, while itself provably working in it's own interest. This is pretty win-win if anything.

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2. ixmatus ◴[03 Apr 14 23:15 UTC] No.7527754[source]▶
Or increase your salary and use the surplus to donate. But really most of that profit should probably be directed to improving the business, or R&D that goes back into the business (which can be opensource!).
3. mcintyre1994 ◴[04 Apr 14 01:10 UTC] No.7528434[source]▶
Anothing thing he mentioned which I think is really important here is that a business (at least his own) cannot make a donation, that's an unnecessary business expense. It seems important to understanding his view - he wants to pay more for an even better service but literally cannot do so legally.
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4. gpvos ◴[08 Apr 14 14:58 UTC] No.7553798[source]▶
My question here is: why can't a business make an "unnecessary business expense"? Are businesses legally forbidden from doing so? Really? Why?

Or does it just mean that the business can't deduct it from its earnings for tax reasons? In that case, why doesn't the business just pay the extra tax? In my eyes, there's nothing wrong with paying tax.

I just cannot understand why anyone would make a rule against such a thing.

(Note: as you probably already understand, I do not run a business.)