Thibault Duplessis is actually an ex co-worker of mine, and this guy is truly impressive.
Not only he is a very talented developer, he really sticks to his beliefs and made what Lichess is today.
He used to take up a job for a year or so, save money, and travel the world for a year or so until money runs out. Then he would come back to France and take up a new job. All working on Lichess during his free time.
For a few years now he has enough donation to pay himself enough money for his expenses, while he could have been a startup millionaire if he had decided to take a different path.
But he proved that you can have a successful non-profit, free of charge, free from ads service. Not just source code, but an actual service hosted with millions of users.
A way to have more people like Thibault is to make it so the cost of living is extremely cheap, if not totally guaranteed. A society creates its people.
What we need is a system that incenctivises people like Thibault, rather than incentivise people to develop nastier ways to make people click on ads :)
I love absolutely everything about this. Thank you for sharing his story.
Free/Libre software has been built thanks to principled people like him. It's truly a collective effort. And corporations started to slowly eroding it from within.
What an inspiration! I’m doing more or less the same with c0d3.com
Been working on the learning community for about 5 years now.
I’ve saved up enough for a year, will be quitting In 2 weeks to go back to teaching and improving the experience and teach more students about good engineering practices.
He may as well be a millionaire in the future. By having a platform that people use you do get a minimal amount of bug fixing and stability of the platform. Lichess is a platform for companies to use it for their purposes with some tweaks here and there it can be an education platform, a platform for engineers to practice the internals of machines and many more possibilities.
Joomla is open source and their devs make so much money selling plugins and widgets. Who is the best man for the job to tweak the platform than the developers who made the open source core of it?
I use lichess everyday for years, the stability of the platform is absolutely top notch. An absolute minimal amount of bugs, no glitches in the website, every page i click on, loads instantaneously. The commercial website Chess24 and closed source, doesn't have "ultrabullet' games, very quick games of 15 seconds, because their platform cannot support it. lol
I made a site heavily inspired by lichess (specifically AGPL, no ads ever, free forever), but for crossword board games (think Scrabble, Words with Friends, etc). You can see it here at https://woogles.io
It has been growing steadily and we're about to hit 400K games played; it's the site of choice for the streaming community and we just finished hosting the World Blitz Championship this past week :)
Thibault is sort of my hero. We've talked about doing some sort of cross-promotion but I'd like to polish our app a bit more before I follow up again.
I wish you the absolute best of luck. If this notion/method of operating community platforms takes off, the world will be far better for it. Imagine if the average human's interaction with the internet were open free (both as in beer and as in idealistically) platforms that encouraged social collaboration, personal interaction, and community formation. Wikipedia, Lichess... maybe woogles. It could easily be an impetus for social change in the meat-flesh world. Even more powerful if it seeps into "real" social media platforms. It sounds like a revival and reformation of the diverse community diasporas around during web 1.0.
... so much better than the vision for the future coming from the powerful technocrats living in silicon valley, the primary users of HackerNews. The future is for the people.
My sister plays a lot of scrabble so I am happy to be able to share your site with her.
If I can be so bold as to offer one criticism of your site though, it was a bit confusing when I first clicked to look at it. The first page is a barrage of information none of which seemed relevant for my first visit. I clicked the links at the top of the page and ended up on completely different web sites with equally confusing first pages.
Eventually I did click and watch a scrabble game being played, which looked great!
This is brilliant, just being able to spectate high ELO scrabble games is unreasonably entertaining. The kind of words these people come up with is crazy.
I know lichess invests a lot of energy into catching cheaters, is that something you've had to look into? I imagine it's much harder to catch cheaters than in chess.
Yes!!! Finally --- it is about time that someone made a modern alternative to isc.ro which is full of security problems (e.g. passwords stored in plaintext; your rack is randomly generated on the clientside) and looks ugly.
Any plans to allow the use of your site without a login? I'd like to play with my family but getting them all to create an account would be too difficult.
Presumably the owners of the trade marks you just referred to (Scrabble, etc.) are onboard [no pun intended!] with you? Otherwise I see tortuous infringement court cases in your future!?
I thought Mattel only allowed their own online games to be called "Scrabble" RTM.
Disclaimer: this is personal opinion and relates in no way to my employment.
Lichess is truly on a class of its own. It delivers a better service than any of it’s alternatives (in my opinion), and it’s actually 100% free with no BS.
Funny enough, I’ve donated around $30 in total which is $30 more than I would’ve ever thought of spending on a chess site. Hats off to thibault and the open source community for creating such a wonderful gem.
I hope OVH would donate some compute/machines to lichess. It would help lichess a lot financially. It would be good publicity for OVH and I think it would be a drop in the ocean on their balance sheet.
Lichess is such an inspiring demonstration of what talented enthusiasts can build, even when driven not by profit but by simple passion. You can feel the craftsmanship and the love of chess in the app and in the speed of iteration. We could use more of this in the world.
lichess is by far the finest piece of complex online software I’ve ever used. Desktop or mobile it works perfectly. There is no Silicon Valley, Spartan hiring processes, elite University filters: just open source contribution and a great quality gate.
It’s also a great example of something born of and sustained by a community: a testament to the chess demography.
"(chessbase.com, ICC, FICS are lesser alternatives now)"
I'd say that the main competitor of the two is now Chess24.
It follows the subscription/premium model, taking it even further than Chess.com. Eg. the latter doesn't require you to be a paid user just to export a pgn of your own game - but Chess24 does.
You could literally donate $5 to lichess and that would provide enough funding for more games than most people would ever play in a lifetime ($0.00021 per game, thats 23809 games at $5) : https://lichess.org/costs
Excellent article. Serious kudos to the Lichess team on building and operating such a complex piece of software purely on donations.
I think the most valuable lesson here for me is the understanding between the contributors and their key stakeholders. Because monetary gains and growth are not their KPI, they were able to maintain their software at their own pace.
Thought exercise: Do you foresee this model staying if Lichess were to be acquired by another company?
Because English contract law has a reputation for reliability, thanks to the common law doctrine of stare decisis, which binds courts to decide the same way as previous cases with the same facts were decided (modulo appeals courts). French law, by contrast, gives much more freedom to judges to decide each case individually, which sounds nice in theory, but in practice just creates legal uncertainty for everyone involved.
As to why English law, and not, say, New York or New South Wales law, well: England is only 21 miles from France.
I like lichess, it is my first go to website to play chess, but for-profit models also have their advantages. For example in chess.com, they pay grandmasters to be there, and one can learn a lot from grandmasters. They earn money, and invest them back so the site can be even better. So I think neither model is wrong, or inherently better than the other.
Always good to see. (I’m tired of seeing ads everywhere too!) Bravo.
Though, I disagree on the restaurant analogy. Not being open-source isn’t the lack of willingness to share the ingredients. It’s choosing not to share the recipe, which is almost every restaurant.
They'll never get to unicorn status with that attitude.
Heck, they have no moat! Anyone can just walk in, use their source code, and set up their own free chess site!
I'm sure this is all great for chess lovers and the game of chess as a whole, but what about all of the investors who will never have the thrill of a 10% IPO pop?
It just seems kind of selfish to make such an amazing site and then not try to cash in on all that value.
> There is absolutely nothing positive about advertisements on websites from the perspective of their users. They eat up valuable screen space and bandwidth for something that nobody wants to see. They often manipulate and misinform. They have even been the source of security vulnerabilities many times in the past.
It's weird that web advertising is utterly terrible and toxic but I am actually nostalgic for print ads from Fry's Electronics (rip). They were one of my favorite parts of print newspapers.
Old computer magazines also had great advertisements.
[+] [-] eloisant|5 years ago|reply
Not only he is a very talented developer, he really sticks to his beliefs and made what Lichess is today.
He used to take up a job for a year or so, save money, and travel the world for a year or so until money runs out. Then he would come back to France and take up a new job. All working on Lichess during his free time.
For a few years now he has enough donation to pay himself enough money for his expenses, while he could have been a startup millionaire if he had decided to take a different path.
But he proved that you can have a successful non-profit, free of charge, free from ads service. Not just source code, but an actual service hosted with millions of users.
We need more people like Thibault.
[+] [-] beebmam|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrepd|5 years ago|reply
What we need is a system that incenctivises people like Thibault, rather than incentivise people to develop nastier ways to make people click on ads :)
[+] [-] ArtWomb|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kome|5 years ago|reply
Free/Libre software has been built thanks to principled people like him. It's truly a collective effort. And corporations started to slowly eroding it from within.
[+] [-] fersho311|5 years ago|reply
Been working on the learning community for about 5 years now.
I’ve saved up enough for a year, will be quitting In 2 weeks to go back to teaching and improving the experience and teach more students about good engineering practices.
[+] [-] huevosabio|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1337shadow|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phoinix|5 years ago|reply
Joomla is open source and their devs make so much money selling plugins and widgets. Who is the best man for the job to tweak the platform than the developers who made the open source core of it?
I use lichess everyday for years, the stability of the platform is absolutely top notch. An absolute minimal amount of bugs, no glitches in the website, every page i click on, loads instantaneously. The commercial website Chess24 and closed source, doesn't have "ultrabullet' games, very quick games of 15 seconds, because their platform cannot support it. lol
[+] [-] CyberRabbi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cdelsolar|5 years ago|reply
It has been growing steadily and we're about to hit 400K games played; it's the site of choice for the streaming community and we just finished hosting the World Blitz Championship this past week :)
Thibault is sort of my hero. We've talked about doing some sort of cross-promotion but I'd like to polish our app a bit more before I follow up again.
[+] [-] earthscienceman|5 years ago|reply
... so much better than the vision for the future coming from the powerful technocrats living in silicon valley, the primary users of HackerNews. The future is for the people.
[+] [-] tux1968|5 years ago|reply
If I can be so bold as to offer one criticism of your site though, it was a bit confusing when I first clicked to look at it. The first page is a barrage of information none of which seemed relevant for my first visit. I clicked the links at the top of the page and ended up on completely different web sites with equally confusing first pages.
Eventually I did click and watch a scrabble game being played, which looked great!
[+] [-] bspammer|5 years ago|reply
I know lichess invests a lot of energy into catching cheaters, is that something you've had to look into? I imagine it's much harder to catch cheaters than in chess.
[+] [-] porphyra|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zestros|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbhjpbhj|5 years ago|reply
I thought Mattel only allowed their own online games to be called "Scrabble" RTM.
Disclaimer: this is personal opinion and relates in no way to my employment.
[+] [-] olah_1|5 years ago|reply
Maybe add more of a header section to explain the game or have a picture of what it looks like in a game?
[+] [-] lavp|5 years ago|reply
Funny enough, I’ve donated around $30 in total which is $30 more than I would’ve ever thought of spending on a chess site. Hats off to thibault and the open source community for creating such a wonderful gem.
[+] [-] laydn|5 years ago|reply
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Si3PMUJGR9KrpE5lngSk...
I hope OVH would donate some compute/machines to lichess. It would help lichess a lot financially. It would be good publicity for OVH and I think it would be a drop in the ocean on their balance sheet.
[+] [-] sethbannon|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] usgroup|5 years ago|reply
It’s also a great example of something born of and sustained by a community: a testament to the chess demography.
[+] [-] neatze|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sireat|5 years ago|reply
It is a worthy alternative to chess.com model . There should be room for both.(chessbase.com, ICC, FICS are lesser alternatives now)
That said this low pressure model only works when you are a lean shop(single developer proficient in Scala) AND have millions of users.
Running a lean shop might be an admirable goal but millions of users is not for every project.
There are thousands of worthy open source projects which struggle to give their creator sustenance through donations.
The exceptions are few(Vue comes to mind).
[+] [-] V-2|5 years ago|reply
I'd say that the main competitor of the two is now Chess24.
It follows the subscription/premium model, taking it even further than Chess.com. Eg. the latter doesn't require you to be a paid user just to export a pgn of your own game - but Chess24 does.
[+] [-] qyi|5 years ago|reply
Just looked it up and people actually donate thousands of dollars to a JS project?
https://opencollective.com/vuejs
Crazy.
[+] [-] sabujp|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PradeetPatel|5 years ago|reply
I think the most valuable lesson here for me is the understanding between the contributors and their key stakeholders. Because monetary gains and growth are not their KPI, they were able to maintain their software at their own pace.
Thought exercise: Do you foresee this model staying if Lichess were to be acquired by another company?
[+] [-] beforeolives|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cassepipe|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teachingassist|5 years ago|reply
https://lichess.org/terms-of-service
This seems rather an odd arrangement. Does anyone have any insight here?
[+] [-] brainwad|5 years ago|reply
As to why English law, and not, say, New York or New South Wales law, well: England is only 21 miles from France.
[+] [-] almavi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] haskal|5 years ago|reply
Lichess is responsible for most of my chess progress through matches, puzzles, analysis board. Excellent piece of software.
[+] [-] greyman|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] almavi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gokhan|5 years ago|reply
Carlsen, on Lichess, against other GMs and FMs.
[+] [-] aloisdg|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mproud|5 years ago|reply
Though, I disagree on the restaurant analogy. Not being open-source isn’t the lack of willingness to share the ingredients. It’s choosing not to share the recipe, which is almost every restaurant.
[+] [-] xipho|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ineedasername|5 years ago|reply
Heck, they have no moat! Anyone can just walk in, use their source code, and set up their own free chess site!
I'm sure this is all great for chess lovers and the game of chess as a whole, but what about all of the investors who will never have the thrill of a 10% IPO pop?
It just seems kind of selfish to make such an amazing site and then not try to cash in on all that value.
[+] [-] thisiswater|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fredros|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kthejoker2|5 years ago|reply
* product aimed at specific audience / general audience
* product is "one big idea" / a lot of little ideas
* product requires long term engagement / short term engagement
Only "specific audience" / "one big idea" / "long term engagement" can expect to - indeed, must - thrive on patronage.
The 7 other boxes are beholden to their users' fickleness.
[+] [-] brainwad|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philliphaydon|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] musicale|5 years ago|reply
It's weird that web advertising is utterly terrible and toxic but I am actually nostalgic for print ads from Fry's Electronics (rip). They were one of my favorite parts of print newspapers.
Old computer magazines also had great advertisements.
[+] [-] luke2m|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oytis|5 years ago|reply