Adam writes about why he shut down Organizine, the content management web application he spent a few months building and then launched very recently. He writes: "Everyone thinks I'm crazy. This is understandable. I probably am." I think quite the opposite. Adam is completely right and sane-sounding to me. Why on Earth would he want to spend his junior year of college managing a web application? Most people have no idea what that involves. If you say, well then he was crazy for building it in the first place, I say wrong again: Building stuff is fun!
This episode brings up some interesting issues about web applications. If Adam would have chosen to take on the responsibilities of running Organizine, and it gained popularity, it would have become a significant financial burden, as well as a time- and energy-sink. In order to manage that burden, he would have needed to either limit users to some manageable level or start charging money (or find some other business model to sustain the free service). Going to all that work for a limited number of users would be discouraging. But to start charging money requires forming some sort of business (or other entity) around the service, which creates all kinds of new headaches.
For non-web applications, there isn't such a dilemma. You can release your software for free (or shareware, or whatever) and put it out into the world without such the responsibilities or potential burdens of success. Of course, prior to widespread Internet use, it was difficult and/or expensive to get your software into many people's hands quickly. So, as more application move to the web, it's kind of like we're moving back to a time when distribution is again issue for software companies, where, for a while there, it wasn't so much. Kind of.