lichess.org

If lichess sought profit from the first, instead of being a non-profit...

How much do you think it'd have earned?
This is totally hypothetical, i don't want it to become so. Just wondering...
@buzzywasps said in #1:
> How much do you think it'd have earned?
> This is totally hypothetical, i don't want it to become so. Just wondering...
0
@buzzywasps said in #1:
> How much do you think it'd have earned?
> This is totally hypothetical, i don't want it to become so. Just wondering...

It would have become chess.com and earned millions of dollars.
Not sure exactly what your angle on the question is.

Did you mean?: If Lichess had originally started as a pay to play site, how much money would it have generated?

My guess is little to none and my reasoning for this: It's very expensive to create and maintain a functional online website with chess features.
Most of the programming were done by programmers donating their knowledge and spare time to help create this site.
They would not have spent their time fixing and nerding around numbers for free; while some other guy was making a profit.
So I don't think this site as is, would even have gotten off the ground, if it weren't created as a Non-profit.
Lichess owes it's success to the programmers, whose knowledge built this site; the monetary donators who payed for the hardware.
If you read Thibault's blog about the starting of Lichess (lichess.org/@/thibault/blog/how-i-started-building-lichess/JwtcE0KO), there is no way it would start as a pay to play site. Also if it was, no would have joined at the start and the site most likely would have been abandoned. With the help of the chess community, volunteers, and now mods and site keepers, we have the current Lichess. Lichess can't make the switch to pay to play now, and couldn't have during the process either. They also would be owing all the helpers money if it becomes pay to play now and many of those good souls have to be tracked now. Lichess would also lose a tremendous amount of people and all. But to be real, Lichess mods are getting payed and so are the people who still create it daily. People who donate help change Lichess daily, and if you love this site you should definitely do so. I feel Lichess did it the best way it could and let the people who love this site and want to, donate, and let others play chess in the non-profit chess site they love. They don't even advertise donating or anything to let people play what they came on this site to do, chess. To be real, Lichess would never do become a pay to play site, and will stay the beloved Lichess that will continue to change for the better. Hey, you never know maybe we might get another legendary April Fools! Lichess and Horsey = The Best Chess Site Ever :D
@Akbar2thegreat and @BKrivi09 yeah it will, it would make a big difference. If you pay for Chess.com, it has more than just chess as a lot of it's site is free too. In my opinion Lichess would always be better, but a lot of people would leave Lichess and a lot of people wouldn't join it in the first place. There are other non-profit chess sites than the two we Lichessers always focus on, and people would transition and join those too. All of these sites have differences and people who join them pick the ones that they prefer. Yeah, Lichess might make more money, but Thibault will never be be like EA. I feel Lichess did it the right way, and that most of the 200,000 active members agree :)

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