> He phrases it to be as if the free tier is a favor Cloudflare does to the world, as if it's not obviously a loss-leader designed to get more people into the Cloudflare ecosystem.

It can be both. I run many open source websites behind cloudflare.

It's the same as github. All the free hosting and free CIs and free issues/discussion forums, and free code review for open source repos (90% of all open source projects?) happens to be a a loss leader as well.

Both are still a huge free contribution to the world. They don't have to do it. They could just have zero free anything.

▲

wrxd a day ago | parent | next [-]

What market share would they have without offering the free tier? Much lower than what they have now, and that would make for a more decentralised and resilient internet

▲

ITB a day ago | parent | next [-]

Do you remember how bad things were before CloudFlare? You’d get attacked constantly if you ran a large website.

	▲	pred_ a day ago \| parent [-]
		I remember Tor being significantly more usable, and not having random 3 second delays on websites.

▲

tick_tock_tick a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> and that would make for a more decentralised and resilient internet

The only people that say that haven't run a site on the open internet in the last decade plus. It's such an ignorant takes it's hard to take anything you say seriously.

▲

wrxd a day ago | parent [-]

I’m not advocating for having no protections at all. Without Cloudflare giving away protection for free it’s entirely possible that we would have multiple smaller provider offering protection at a fair price so maybe only a smaller fraction of the internet goes offline next time Cloudflare pushes a bad configuration

	▲	Moldoteck 15 hours ago \| parent [-]
		fair price and europe sounds interesting... regardless it still means your competition will have it easier

▲

ITB a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Im sorry but your epistemics are very wrong. Providing a free service with no strings attached to nearly every website in the world adds a ton of value, possibly more than Cloudflare’s market cap. And the fact that a free product can lead to profits, when other companies make the choice to pay more, does not remove that worldly contribution.

▲

yomismoaqui a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The first one is always free...

▲

pannolino a day ago | parent | prev [-]

I prefer to not have it at all. One thing is offering free service because you truly know the values. The other is making threats to people.