Not news worthy, but definitely interesting. One camp says that the purpose of property rights is to incentivize value-additive economic activity by connecting investment to reward. A different camp says that the purpose of (asset) property rights is to pay rich people for being rich, thereby establishing and reinforcing a class hierarchy where the people on the bottom pay to exist and the people on top get paid to exist.
Improvement value has a shape that mostly fits the former narrative while land value has a shape that mostly fits the latter narrative. Whenever you observe a sale that establishes a relative proportion between land value and improvement value, you are observing the market's revealed opinion on the relative validity of these conflicting political narratives.
My wife and I have been architects since 2013, and back in 2018, it was almost impossible to find high-quality free materials. Polyhaven (formerly Texture Haven) and AmbientCG (CC0Textures) mainly focused on more natural assets. We decided to give it a try, and within just two weeks, we reached 100 patrons. So, ShareTextures is funded by the patrons, and as a result of this support, we continue creating.
We have our website because we want to provide some advantages to our patrons. Additionally, it helps us promote our supporters, partners, etc.
Don't you have a feeling that your actions will break down the market and kills the revenue for those who depend on this kind of income? I mean, you people are architects, not some digital beggars. You should ask a minimal price for it, but should not offer it for free, as others have also pointed it out.
We understand your concern, but we believe in the power of sharing and accessibility. We aim to support the community by offering free materials and 3D models. Our creations are simply tools to aid talented artists in creating their main products.There are unlimited options to create a digital asset. (style, design, year, condition, etc.) We can't create all of them.
Yes, much open-source software is free, enabling more people to use and contribute to it. Paid options might offer extra perks. Personally, I appreciate the accessibility and collaborative spirit of open-source software. It fosters innovation and community involvement, which I value. For example, if you check ArtStation's or Unreal Engine's Learning sections, you will see free tutorials from real experts. This exemplifies the power of the internet.
And makes people vulnerable, since they will have only one option to get more income and that is from a company. Because this will be a race to the bottom. You provide something for free, while you are getting paid by some nefarious entities who pay for your work on patreon. Race to the bottom, because there is now way to compete with you. Either offer better work or offer your time and resources for free in exchange for some exposure.
Architects get paid for making models, so why is it not fathomable for the poster that they should pay for the textures they use? Or, why do some workers deserve to get paid and others not?
Edit: And reading the reply from the architects, you can almost smell the entitlement.
What don't you get? DO not work for free, because it kills yout income stream. Open Source is the perfect example. Fuck, and these individuals even have a patreon where a few individuals pay for this. I mean, this is bonkers.
I also want to add;
It's not like selling a physical product. Digital products usually need to be edited to fit your design. Person A still paid because they will always have customers who like their style & creations. We are not creating and sharing "Kitbash or Evermotion" level assets. These works require thousands of work hours and it's impossible to live sharing them free.
Nope, you are killing an income stream for others. That's what you have to understand, but I think you know it, just want to ruin the ecosystem. FOSS has the same issues, and now you are making sure another area heads there.
If that's the case, I guess my confusion comes from how one can assume this position and in the next breath complain about people acting entitled to others' work?
If someone can create or reproduce the same kind of work that Person A produces, then that work effort (not the work product, the work) holds less value. Person A should do something to add more value.
A similar argument can be had for something that can be made cheaper than a more expensive option. If my company makes a widget that takes 100 people to make over the course of a year, and then someone comes along and finds a way to make it at substantially less cost (not labor costs) via technological improvement, then seems like OP would similarly be against this, which doesn't jive with nearly any definition of capitalism.
I think it's so they can provide a quality web experience curated to facilitate their Patreon goals.
Their work is free, but they likely want to ensure folks know "who" is making all these assets and that they have a Patreon so you can help support their efforts.
That seems fair to me considering the generosity at play here.
And also encapsulates a problem embedded in the way the author expresses the differentiation.
Luck is not just about recognizing opportunities when they arise, its also about being in a position to act on those opportunities.
I've read several times that professional poker players are very good at doing math in their head to evaluate how good a bet actually is. Basically, you take the apparent cost of an operation (maybe the raise from a previous player), multiply it by the odds of losing, then decide if that value is above or below what you can "afford" to lose. So if the fee to stay in is $5,000, and the odds of losing the next hand are 3 in 5, then the gambler has to decide "can I afford to lose $3,000 right now?". If the answer is yes, then bet. If not, then fold. The hard part is ignoring the apparent sunk cost.
So if I'm chronically unlucky, either I'm garbage at recognizing opportunities, or when I do recognize opportunities, I'm not in a position to act on them. It can certainly be the case that the former contributes to the latter. But it can also be the case that you just never get an opportunity to get in the game, so to speak, in the first place. Everybody needs that one big break to get in the game. Not everybody gets that break.
Because it's a tough sell to put a camera right in front of people's TV. IIRC, the only product managed to do this is Portal TV from Facebook...
I actually tried something like this and talked to lots of potential users about this (during 2020 pandemic). But the willingness to pay for the camera is quite low.
I remember when the Xbox 360 was announced and the core idea is that you plugged all your media crap into it. Combined with Kinect, it screamed, “we just want to know what you’re doing.”
+1, System76's build quality is terrible. My company spent lots of $$$ on system76 workstations, only found that GPU card falls off during shipping due to the terrible design they have...
Unpopular opinion: Mozilla has some unique advantage to win the 3D Web.
1/ Hubs and spoke (https://hubs.mozilla.com/spoke) are trying to solve the problem of how to composite and deliver 3D assets over web protocol.
1.1/ Unlike jpegs that can be passively embedded into web pages, 3D assets requires active interactions with other objects.
1.2/ Traditionally, we need a 3D game engine to pack all the assets into one big binary, then build and ship the binary over cartridge, DVD, or recently Steam.
1.3/ Spoke + Hubs is the new web-based 3D engine, which can potentially revolutionize how we create and access 3D content.
2/ Being a popular, open source, and independent browser company gives Mozilla the position of leading the effort to standardize the convention of the 3D Web.
3/ This is low level tech and worth investing in. Also Mozilla makes decent money (> $500M each year) and this is something they can comfortably afford.
4/ Virtual meeting space is just one use case. Admittedly Hubs' implementation is less than super well polished, but I don't know whether they want to be the 3D Zoom in the long run. But I will say it's pretty neat if we treat it like a tech demo for their Web-based 3D engine.
Considering Mozilla had to lay off a significant amount of the company, including almost all of the developers on the rust teams, not too long ago I’m not so sure how comfortably they can afford it.
Once they start charging for [MDN Plus](https://www.ghacks.net/2022/02/21/mdn-plus-mozilla-plans-to-...) they'll not only be able to afford it, but also give their board well deserved raises. After all, user surveys keep indicating that what Mozilla users want more than anything else is to pay for User generated MDN content.
>After all, user surveys keep indicating that what Mozilla users want more than anything else is to pay for User generated MDN content.
This isn't what's planned. They will not be charging for user-generated content including all content currently available on MDN. They will be charging for additional in-depth articles as well as some "premium" features when it comes to personalization and easier off-line use[0].
[0] and of course nobody will prevent you from rolling our own such features or even a competing MDN-like site, as the content is available under CC-BY-SA-2.5 on github.
They aren't really independent because a huge chunk of their money comes from Google. Their open source, not counting Rust because they divested that, is also mostly under their own copyleft license which discourages outside collaboration.
Wow, I haven't encountered such an obvious technological fad since 3D TV was a thing, and I'm quite sure the "3D web" such as it is will meet the same fate. It has all the same markers too:
- a stalling industry desperately looking for a new revenue stream: check
- heavily locked down content tied to expensive hardware: check
- aggressively pushing an unwanted product that doesn't do anything anyone really needs: check
Yet still, this post is now ranked top 1 on HN.