What is better, hypothetically?

Sometimes I’m sad I don’t have private repls (lol poor+no tips) but I don’t know which is better, private repls or public repls? This poll isn’t about that. I want to figure out if Replit made the right choice by making private repls paid instead of public repls.

Think about multiple sides of the situation (if you want): Replit’s paycheck, user interactivity, users gained/lost, et cetera.
  • Public repls should be free; private repls should be paid.
  • Private repls should be free; sharing repls should be paid.

0 voters

for fun

Should both be paid?

I know the correct answer is that everything should be free

The way I think of this:

Public repls allow you to share your code with anybody and it allows for things like tipping, which allows regular users to use cycles. It encourages people to make better projects (I’m not talking about tips) buuuuut your repls are exposed and ALL your code is right there, and a handy dandy button to copy it all. Sure, there are kind people who will credit you for what you did, but some people fork and ignore.

Private repls allow you to have projects with (semi) confidence that your code will be credited and it can’t be stolen without your knowledge. What you lose is a lot of that sharing and you basically have nobody to give your repl to. Now, you code only for yourself and nobody else without them having specific access.

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Personally, I’d want public Repls to be free and private Repls to be paid.

When I want to make a private Repl, I write the code and save it to my device.

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Reasons why the second would not affect me that much
Personally I don’t really share my Repls at all (posting it on the Community page) simply because none of them are good enough because I usually don’t feel like doing it, and also more attention on a single Repl could mean more Outbound Data Transfer gets used, and I don’t want that to happen.
And, then again, if I want Repliters to know about my Repl, I could just go to Ask and paste the Repl link in a new Showcase post, and how would Replit make me pay for that?
And let’s say I did want to share my code, well then there’s GitHub with another free repo.

Reasons why the first wouldn’t affect me that much
While I would like the ability to have Private Repls, it’s not really necessary. Since I usually code in Python I can just load up VSC on my PC and of course no one else can see that.
If I did make a Public Repl though what’s really the harm in that?

So because of all of that, and since this is hypothetical so I guess anything can happen, I went with the second.

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People use Replit to host servers, sites, etc. Some of these reple can contain confidential information and not everybody uses secrets.

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Egress restricts our ability to share, so I do think is completely useless (Replit tells you to share your projects, and then you also have to be careful to not to overshare?)

If it’s something like a text based game, you probably would have to invite everyone who wants to check it out.

It’s not necessary, that’s true :slight_smile: and also, your code can be forked.

Well I personally don’t keep confidential info in my Repls, and if I do they do go into Secrets.
For those who do what you mentioned… well that’s them I guess.

Wait, if you put it onto Ask Showcase, can’t anyone see it? And if you knew of some people who might like to see it, couldn’t you just ping them?

That’s true. I wish there was a system in place so that you could limit how many runs could be done on your Repl, or perhaps how many people could run it, etc.

And people will see who they forked it from… so they can be led to the original.
If you’re really paranoid about it then put your code in a Secret and run it from there - it gets deleted when someone forks it. Or just encrypt your code and then before running it, decrypt it.

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If they make it so that you have to pay to share repls, it kinda defeats the purpose of replit being a public coding community.

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Yes… but that means you can not worry about people who straight-up steal code. I [dislike] people who do that.

That’s assuming that Replit was created as a public coding community. Hypothetically, Replit could have started without sharing.

Private Repls kind of defeat this purpose as well if you think about it… yet it’s a feature

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But you can choose to make private repls, it’s not required

But my point is/was it’s a feature whether or not you use it

But that still does not defeat the purpose, and some people may want to use it if they have sensitive info on there (pictures, names, etc.)

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That’s their problem, then. If someone doesn’t use all Replit’s useful features, it’s his/her fault.

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Also, if you want your code private but the project is public you could just paste it all on a secret. If you want your code and your project private just save it on your device like I mentioned above.

I thought you can’t do this because of Ghost Forks. It’s useful if you’re starting a webserver, but regular text-based things won’t work IIRC.

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Sharing Knowledge should be Free (GPL, MPL, BSD, CC0, etc.);
Hoarding Knowledge should be Costly. (Copyright, Patent, etc.)