Rationally-speaking, maybe not. I’ve been a long-time subscriber. When I first subscribed, my day-to-day involved embedded Linux and getting the “breaking news” was pretty valuable. These days I still do that somewhat but I’m stuck on a crusty vendor kernel and anything I read about a kernel newer than 5.15 is going to land on my desk in approximately 2028… but I still subscribe, mostly with a patronage mindset: I don’t acutely get value from the subscription every week, but I think it’s a community service and I’m happy to pitch in a few bucks to keep it alive.

Wouldn’t rationally speaking you’d want to support them to keep them around? Or did you mean selfishly speaking?

I think the generosity and straightforwardness are a big part of the attraction for many subscribers.

They've always respected their readers and I hope that continues to pay off.

Easy to say until they have to eventually make the hard decision to shut down.

This is why nobody likes economists.

Selfishly speaking is the word you were looking for.

Well for me, at least, it's those features that make me a subscriber. If not for those I wouldn't do it

Rationally speaking, if you're getting value from it, you should be interested in its continued existence and therefore subscribe.

I'd argue otherwise.

Crab-bucket mentality aside, what they do is extremely important and hard to do.

I can't write an occasional blog post without wrestling with my ideas and words, and they constantly churn out this high quality material, without ever slowing down. They deserve what they earn.

OTOH, thanks for nudging me towards subscribing to LWN a bit more.

Edit: Just subscribed. Thank you.

That person posted this two years later https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44870881 so I don't think they're going to agree with your interpretation of the comment.

Ah yes, reward the people generating the value less, that should be a neutral move vis a vis the value of the product.

If I can't have something, you shouldn't either, why didn't I think of that! Chud

That's such a weird take away, you're comparing Mozilla which has a diverse set of employees, versus an organization whose sole purpose is to hire high quality technical writers, which is already pretty niche.