You misunderstood me-- I think this is amazingly cool and has a ton of intrinsic value. I was only suggesting that in addition to this, there could be a possibility of making some kind of product that people would like enough to pay for. That would expose more people to creating advanced fractal art beyond a small circle of technologists.
You misunderstood me-- I think this is amazingly cool and has a ton of intrinsic value.
Cool! We're in agreement.
Here's my take: I think there always could be a possibility of making a product that (you could convince) people like enough to pay for. (Here in my country, people literally sell shit for money. Elk shit, to be exact. Apparently, many Germans want to have it in their homes.)
But let's say you come to this wonderful small gelateria in an Italian village. The ice cream is amazing. The setting is amazing. Your experience is breathtaking. Naturally, since we're all entrepreneurs here and all that jazz, you think "I wonder if there's not a commercial value in this". So you start making some kind of ice cream cones or whatever. You make advertising which creates a longing for that experience, that we all kind of know (perhaps even from my few faltering words) of Italian ice cream on a trattoria somewhere in Tuscany. You sell the ice cream to people.
Now, did you expose more people to that original gelateria? No, you didn't! You sold them on the idea, and they got some pretty boring ice cream to eat in their pretty boring home. And you got the money.
That's an approximation of what I'm afraid might happen if you succeeded in convincing the creator to "monetize". But it's ok, you won't do that; first off, he's not here and what's more he's obviously got enough talent to make whatever money he wants to, should he so decide.
Edit: In my original reply, I didn't mean "train". I rather meant "practice". It's a subtle but important difference and I see how it can shift the perception of my message quite a bit. Forgive me, I am not a native speaker.
You make an interesting point about the dangers of blindly "monetizing", but I don't think it's relevant to parent's comment for a few reasons (not the least of which that paying for software doesn't by itself reduce its utility, unlike the ice-cream + scenery example where the implicit scenery value is removed in the commercial "product").
Natural scenery doesn't cost money to make. Making profit off of it isn't intrinsically value-creating.
Software does take effort to make, and being comfortable finding ways to monetize it means more programmers can afford to create things like this. Not everyone has as enough free time to make all the things we want to pro bono. Many people have jobs (often for other people who did figure out how to monetize their own ideas).
So I'm all in favour of developers practicing asking/answering that question, because often finding the answer is what allows them to actually pursue those ideas. It's not wrong for people to sell the fruits of their labour—the world gets fruit that might not have existed otherwise.
Money changing hands doesn't depreciate the value of something.
Your gelateria analogy is flawed, because the gelateria is already a commercial enterprise, making gelato and selling it to customers.
A more apt analogy would be someone who - as a hobby - makes the best damn gelato on the planet...when he has the time.
I think what @eigenvalue was getting at was something like, "hey, I bet people would pay for your gelato, so you could turn this into something more than just a hobby."
