As someone who wants to write open source but needs to be able to capture some financial value from doing that to be able to make it sustainable, what model do you prefer?
My current thoughts lean towards a fully functional open source product with a HashiCorp style BSL and commercial licensing for teams above a size threshold.
I think the open core model is fine, and the most financially sustainable. Just be up front about it from day 1. I don't think the honor system for licensing will get you the results you're wanting.
it depends strongly on why you want to write open source. if you like the idea of putting source code out into the world for other people to use and benefit from then go ahead and use whatever mix of open source and proprietary code you like, just be up front that that's what you are doing.
if you want to promise open source software simply to attract the mindshare and users who habitually ignore anything that isn't open source, trying to capture financial value may well be infeasible unless some rare confluence of stars lines up for you. the key is in the word "capture" - capturing the value implies making sure it goes to you rather than to someone else, and that means imposing restrictions that will simply piss those same users off.
I can't imagine that works very well for relatively small, simple, functional or intuitive projects though. Incentives wise, is it possible to sell reverse support: extracting payment for all the times the product works so well that support isn't needed?
It will be, eventually, unless a maintainer is able to maintain during the day. It doesn't matter what the source of free time is however: retired, rich, runs a company from their open source project, paid by somebody else, etc., but full time job + open source maintainer = dead project, eventually.
I don't think open issues is a fair way to judge project liveness. TypeScript also has hundreds of open issues going back years with no traction. Is TypeScript dead?
Yes, issues that are years old show me the commitment level. Not a knock against HTMX but a clear sign of priorities. Carson is free to meme all day and talk about other projects. It's very clear where he stands and that's fine
this year I created and released fixi.js, created the montana mini computer (https://mtmc.cs.montana.edu), published an paper on hypermedia via the ACM, got hyperscript to 1.0, released 3 versions of htmx, reworked all the classes that I teach at montana state and am planning on releasing a java-based take on rails that I'm building for my web programming class
i am also the president of the local youth baseball program and helped get BigSkyDevCon over the hump
i think you'd be surprised at how little time i actually spend on twitter
as always, my issue is never with how you spend your time. you are a giver of gifts and I wish more people that relied on HTMX stepped up to make it better. in no way should anything be expected of you. How you spend your time is obviously your call. MIT is MIT
It was a rhetorical question; the answer is no, old issues with no updates don't necessarily indicate anything about the health of the project. Different people have different project management styles. You use your style for your project, and Carson uses his for htmx. There's no one correct way to manage an issue backlog.
source is MIT, do what you want. The team found certain plugins to be anti-patterns and support burdens. You can find the old plugins in the repo source, feel free to fork from there!
I just come from writing a comment on the other Datastar post on the home page, literally saying that I don't see the point of it and that I don't like it.
But I'm now here to defend Datastar.
It's their code, which, up to now, they built and literally given away totally for free, under a MIT license. Everything (even what "they moved to the Pro tier") should still be free and under the MIT license that it was published under originally.
You just decided to rely and freeload (as, as far as I can tell, you never contributed to the project).
You decided to rely on a random third party that owns the framework. And now you're outraged because they've decided that from now on, future work will be paid.
The software was released as a free version, with NO expectation for it to go commercial.
The fact that they switch to a paid version, and stripping out features from the original free version, is called "bait and switch".
If OP knew in advanced, he will have been informed about this and the potential 299 price tag. And he will have been able to make a informed decision BEFORE integrating the code.
> You just decided to rely and freeload (as, as far as I can tell, you never contributed to the project).
But you complaint about him being a freeloader for not contributing to a project. What a ridiculous response.
I feel like you never even read the post and are making assumption that OP is a full time programmer.
Datastar can do whatever they want, its their code. But calling out a *bait and switch* does not make OP the bad guy.
Yeah, I agree, it's over the top. I'm just matching the over-the-top language of the original post, which pretty much calls the Datastar devs "disgraceful" and to "f them".
I did read the post. I know OP not a programmer. And that makes it even worse: OP has the audacity of saying they "make no money from the project" while it being a scheduling tool for their presumably plenty money-making clinic.
It would in fact be less shocking if they were a programmer doing a side project for fun.
This piece is not a rational, well tempered article. Is a rant by someone who just took something that was free and is now outraged and saying fuck you to those who made their project possible in the first place, not even understanding how licenses work or even being aware that the code they relied on is still there, on github, fully intact, and available for them.
This sort of people not only want to get it for free. They want their code to be maintained and improved for free in perpetuity.
its not bait and switch, its main has features we are willing to continue to support given we did a whole rewrite and this is what we think you should use. Don't like it? Fork it, code is still there. I hope your version is better!
> its not bait and switch, its main has features we are willing to continue to support given we did a whole rewrite and this is what we think you should use. Don't like it? Fork it, code is still there. I hope your version is better!
It sounds like your are the dev of Datastar...
Let me give one piece of advice. Drop the attitude because this is not how you interact in public as the developers of a paid piece of software.
You can get away with a lot when its free/hobby project, but the moment you request payment, there is a requirement for more professionalism. These reactions that i am reading, will trigger responses that will hurt your future paycheck. Your already off on a bad start with this "bait and switch", do not make it worse.
I really question your future client interactions, if they criticize your product(s) or practices.
> I hope your version is better!
No need for Datastar, my HTMX "alternative" has been in production (with different rewrites) over 20 years. So thank you for offering, but no need.
I'll certainly defend d*'s right to do what they did, but the wisdom of doing so is going to come into question as soon as they reject a PR because it contains a feature that's in Pro. I don't think people who are concerned about that deserve to be called "freeloaders", but I guess a fork is a way out of such acidic rhetoric too.
D* has a core, which is open and will be set in stone soon when v1 is released, with the expectation that it'll barely, if ever, change again.
The rest is plugins, which anyone can write or modify. There's no need for the plugins to get merged upstream - just use them in your project, and share them publicly if you want. You could even do the same with the pre-pro versions of the pro plugins - just make the (likely minor) modifications to make them compatible with the current datastar core.
They're also going to be releasing a formal public plugin api in the next release. Presumably it'll be even easier to do all of this then.
Sounds like they put some real thought into it then, which is good news. I was picturing two different core distributions, which would create the sort of conflict I was imagining, but as long as core does stay maintained, it seems likely that fear will stay imaginary.
As I answered somewhere else, the over-the-top freeloader term I think is justified because OP clearly expects not only to benefit from the work already available, freely, but also to be entitled, for free, to any work and improvement that comes in the future.
This is nonsensical. Someone did something for free. Fantastic. They used it, successfully, for a production system that enables scheduling for their job.
Nobody took that away from them. They didn't force them to rebuild their tool.
The code is even there, in the git history, available for them.
If OP doesn't like what the devs decided to do with the project, just move on or fork and pay someone to help you fix any outstanding bugs or missing features.
The “outrage” is literally just people saying they’ll use a different project instead. Why would they ever fork it? They don’t like the devs of datastar they don’t want to use it going forwards. Yes the developers are allowed to do what they want with their code and time, but people are allowed to vote with their feet and go elsewhere and they are allowed to be vocal about it.
The comment is tongue in cheek. On the discord it was discussed at length and some of the plugins in the Pro version were actually considered anti-patterns, it actually is kinda easy to complicate things needlessly when getting used to D* and I know I did this too in the beginning.
As was said by the commenter in another reply, the inspector is actually the bit that makes the Pro version much more appealing but most people wouldn't know from the sidelines.
Arguably that's good though - for the project. It means it's not a bait and switch like many have claimed. You can build pretty much anything with regular Datastar.
I thought the devs' emphatic assertions in their Discord NOT to buy Datastar Pro was a psyop dark pattern. I bought it to spite them, and barely use any of it. I want my css-in-js back!
Sorry, yes it was sarcasm (I should have indicated that explicitly). I'm happy to fund a tool that I really enjoy using, even if I don't use any of the PRO features.
It's also pretty shady that no mention is made of Datastar Pro on the home page [1]. You might well be well on the way to integrating Datastar into your website before you stumble across the Pro edition, which is only mentioned on the side bar of the reference page [2].
Isn't that only a problem if it advertised pro features there without mentioning the fact that they're paid? If it didn't then you could just be happy with the free features, no?
I'd expect it to make it explicit this is a freemium product, with free features and paid features. Nothing is given on the home page to indicate as such.
If they aren’t leading to expect that they have the paid features for free, how is offering them for money any different from just not offering those features at all?
It’s not like your exiting use cases stop working past 10 users or something.
if a feature I want is in the paid product then I assume there's less chance of it being added to the free version. every feature has to go through a process to decide if it's paid or free.
If there's money to be made the possibility that the feature will ever exist at all goes way up. I'd rather have the ability to pay for a feature if I decide I need it than to hope some maintainer gets around to building it for free.
They've said that the feature they put in the premium product are the features they don't want to build or maintain without being paid to do so.
Datastar always rubbed me the wrong way. The author was constantly pushing it in the HTMX discord, telling anyone who would listen that if they liked HTMX how great Datastar would be for them. Some pretty classy comments from them on reddit too:
> It was a full rewrite. Use the beta release forever if it has all the tools you need. No one is stopping you.
> Open source doesn't owe you anything and I expect the same back.
> The author was constantly pushing it in the HTMX discord, telling anyone who would listen that if they liked HTMX how great Datastar would be for them
Agree nothing unclassy. People have this strange expectation that an open source project is out there to serve every single person using it with total attention. It’s not, feel free to fork the beta and use it forever, make your own changes. The pro tier cost is a pittance for anyone using it for profit.
Going to vouch for this. Why does it matter what other people do? This is such a non issue, you are free to fork it and do your own work. I actually believe more open source repos should tastefully have paid tiers to help pay for the continued work.
Which has since been archived. Last post from “Datastar CEO”. I mean cmon, it’s a little cringe. That meme is funny when it’s about HTMX. Like at least try your own memes instead of riding on Carson’s sense of humor too.
Yeah cool, I think this is the point. People want to get paid for the work they produce and the dynamic in open source is not even quietly known to be unsustainable.
I like the communal aspect of open source, but I don’t like overly demanding and entitled free loaders. I’ve had enough of that in my well paid career over the last decade.
This way of getting paid may or may not resonate, but I applaud the attempt to make it work.
Because the incentive is now there. Maybe they don't get enough paid customers and want more money. This puts a bit of pressure to move a new feature that is really handy into the paid level. Then another and another. Might not happen but it could.
Most people using Datastar will not necessarily be smart enough to fork it and add their own changes. And when Datastar makes a new release of the base/free code people will want to keep up to date. That means individuals have to figure out how to integrate their already done changes into the new code and keep that going. It's not a matter of if something breaks your custom code but when.
Finally, many people internalize time as money with projects like this. They're spending many hours learning to use the framework. They don't want to have the effort made useless when something (ex: costs or features) changes outside of their control. Their time learning to use the code is what they "paid" for the software. Doesn't matter if it's rational to you if it is to them.
I'm only working in local dev right now, so i've got the pro version and inspector going. When I get to prod, perhaps this will be a problem.
Yet, surely, this could just be toggled with an env var or db setting or something? if dev, include pro and inspector component. If prod, use free version (or custom bundle that only has what you need)
Finally someone is speaking truth to power. These registered non-profits that release their code for free and their leisure time for support need to be knocked down a notch.
We all know they are evil. But you know the most evil thing? That code that was previously released under a free license? Still sneakily on display in the git history like the crown jewels in the Tower of London. Except of armed guard defending the code that wants to be free once more it's hidden behind arcane git commands. Name me a single person that knows how to navigate the git history. I'm waiting. Spoiler alert: I asked Claude and they don't exist.
Sure, but this person is a doctor (or similar) who took time to learn to code this form up to better serve their patients. They are most likely blessedly ignorant of software licenses and version control.
As I read it the op said, "I don't like how they changed this license, this is a bad direction and I didn't think there was adequate transparency."
And your rebuttal is, "Well you can always recover the code from the git history?"
I mean, this is true, but do you think this really addresses the spirit of the post's complaint? Does mentioning they're a non-profit change anything about the complaint?
The leadership and future of a software project is an important component in its use professionally. If someone believes that the project's leadership is acting in an unfair or unpredictable way then it's rational and prudent for them to first express displeasure, then disassociate with the project if they continue this course. But you've decided to write a post that suggests the poster is being irrational, unfair, and that they want the project to fail when clearly they don't.
If you'd like to critique the post's points, I suggest you do so rather than straw manning and well-poisoning. This post may look good to friends of the project, but to me as someone with only a passing familiarity with what's going on? It looks awful.
Oh I did. I got rid of it. Inspiring both constant censure and the kind of response you're giving drove me to despair.
I don't write things for public consumption now.
But we're not talking about me or the post. We're talking about your refusal to engage with the implications of what the project did.
I don't care what Datastar does. I'd never use Datastar. Looks like exactly what I don't need. They can certainly govern their product as they see fit.
But I've disassociated from projects for less egregious unannounced terms changes. And I've never had that decision come out for the worst, only neutral or better.
It's good to know -- having replace-url functionality behind the paywall is likely to be a deal-killer; I can't help but think that this "freemium" model is really going to kill datastar's prospects for taking off; at best it's likely to result in a fork which ends up subsuming the original project.
That said, the attitude of the guy in the article is really messed up. Saying "fuck you" to someone who gave you something amazing for free, because he's not giving you as much as you want for free -- it's entitled to a toxic degree, and poisons the well for anyone else who may want to do something open-source.
It's more like the mouse saying fuck you to the trap holding the cheese. It's not that the mouse isn't grateful for the free cheese. It's just the mouse understands the surrounding context.
> Saying "fuck you" to someone who gave you something amazing for free, because he's not giving you as much as you want for free
I don't have a problem, on principle, with paywalling new features. I don't like it, but I don't think it's bad behaviour.
Putting up a paywall around features that were previously free, however, I do take issue with. It's deceptive and it's not common practice. It tricks people into becoming invested and then holds hostage the features that they've become invested in using. Frankly, fuck that.
I'm normally not one to discourage anyone from open-source; but if toxic entitlement is going to get you this worked up, you might consider whether it's really your thing. The more successful you are the more you're going to encounter.
On the latter point, couldn't disagree more. He's saying "fuck you" to the product, not the person, and unilaterally removing extant features to paywall them imo is poisoning the well far more than a simple FU to a developer ever could?
We didn't remove the features, if you want to use the old ones they're still there in the repo. We just didn't want to support the old way of doing them when we actively tell people not to use them. If you're going to be a support burden going forward we want you to have skin in the game if not cool do it yourself no one's going to get mad at you
In any hypothetical open source project I make from now on where I am the owner and sole director I'll just get rid of the features entirely if they cause an undue support burden (which the datastar dev has gone up and down both threads saying this is what happened) to avoid specifically your comment.
Seems to fit in with your world view better and then I can just leave those people high and dry with much less concern!
If the point is good stewardship of the product, deleting features that users clearly need only to replace with a for-pay version stinks possibly only slightly less than deprecating features users clearly need and then replacing with nothing. Both of these things mean your product sucks.
That's fine, less entitled people is healthy for a projects ecosystem.
For a proper way this would work, you the user would contribute your time for those features so you don't overburden the maintainer, but people like you won't and so this is where we're at.
I'd rather avoid burnout (which will kill a project entirely) and lose a few folks like you.
> For a proper way this would work, you the user would contribute your time for those features so you don't overburden the maintainer, but people like you won't and so this is where we're at.
Sure, if you're up front and honest from the beginning then some users will do that, the majority are likely to go for other offerings which don't suffer this problem. Vanishingly few users are going to be cool with features disappearing and then reappearing later on with a price tag attached, which is the scenario we're talking about.
In reality, 99.9% of the users are going to be using whatever free thing is available and your project will live for just about as long as you personally care about it. Rightly or wrongly, the maintainer's work/life balance isn't on the forefront of your mind when you're looking at npm packages, no amount of grandstanding will change that.
Sure so the maintainers set the boundary themselves.
I dont know what world you live in where you can be entitled to something you dont pay or contribute to.
They can do whatever they want to ensure their project works and frankly once again the projects dont need people like you. You’re not that important or special at all, certainly less so than the people building things. Like I get that you really think you are it’s dripping from your comments, but you’re not.
And to be clear this was a discussion among their community it wasnt a sudden thing so your entire premise is wrong.
Is the greedy developer in the title the one who wants the 3rd party for free without contributing, or the developer who wrote the said 3rd party and asking compensation?
The problem is that the developer of datastar did a bait and switch. Releasing the beta for free, and then removing features into a pro version with a price tag.
Nothing wrong with people making money on their software but you need to make it clear from the start, that it will be paid software and what price range.
Bait and switch is often used to get people to use your software, you spend time into it, and then if you need a Pro feature, well, fork up or rework your code again. So your paying with your time or money. This is why its nasty and gets people riled up.
Its amazing how many people are defending this behavior.
Correct me if I am wrong here, but what you had for free, you still have it for free, since it's a MIT license, what you cloned initially is still "yours".
Is the problem thar one needs to fork / maintain the code from now on? Is the problem that one wants free support on top of the free library?
I'm not opposed to open source projects placing features that realistically only large/enterprise users would use behind a paywall, i.e. the open core model. When done fairly, I think this is the most sustainable way to build a business around OSS[1]. I even think that subscriptions to such features are a fair way of making the project viable long-term.
But if the project already had features that people relied on, removing them and forcing them to pay to get them back is a shitty move. The right approach would've been to keep every existing feature free, and only commercialize additional features that meet the above criteria.
Now, I can't say whether what they paywalled is a niche/pro feature or not. But I can understand why existing users wouldn't be happy about it.
if we're talking about something immense, like redis, you might have a point. But we're talking about a few hundred lines of simple javascript that are still available to fork and update to be compatible with the new API. The fact that no one has done such a simple thing yet means this is a non-issue
The thing is there's not much practical difference for users. They might not be aware that it's only a few hundred lines of code, and it really doesn't matter. The point is that they were depending on a software feature one day, and the next they were asked to pay for it. That's the very definition of a rugpull. Whether it's a few hundred lines of code, several thousand, or the entire product, the effect is the same.
Forking is always an option, of course, but not many people have the skills nor desire to maintain a piece of software they previously didn't need to. In some cases, this causes a rift in the community, as is the case for Redis/Valkey, Terraform/OpenTofu, etc., which is confusing and risky for users.
All of this could've been avoided by keeping all existing features freely available to everyone, and commercializing new value-add features for niche/enterprise users. Not doing that has understandably soured peoples' opinion of the project and tarnished their trust, as you can see from that blog post, and comments on here and on Reddit. It would be a mistake to ignore or dismiss them.
One other comment though: a lot of what you said rests upon the notion that people were relying on these features.
First, barely anyone used datastar at that point, and those features were particularly arcane. So, the impact was minimal.
Second, its likely that even fewer of them contributed anything at all to the project in general, and those features in particular. What claim do they have to anything - especially when it was just freely given to them, and not actually taken away (the code is still there)?
And to the extent that they can't or wont fix it themselves, what happens if the dev just says "im no longer maintaining datastar anymore"? You might say "well, at least he left them something usable", but how is that any different from considering the pro changes to just be a fork? In essence, he forked his own project - why does anyone have any claim to any of that?
Finally, if they cant fix it themselves (especially when AI could almost certainly fix it rapidly), should they really be developing anything?
In the end, this really is a non-issue. Again, most of the furor is quite clearly performative. Its like when DHH removed typescript from one of his projects that he and his company maintain, and people who have nothing to do with ruby came out of the woodwork to decry the change in his github repo. And even if they do have something to do with ruby, they have no say over how he writes his code.
> a lot of what you said rests upon the notion that people were relying on these features.
They were, though. The blog post linked above, and several people in the Reddit thread linked in the blog post mentioned depending on these features.
We can disagree about whether it matters that a small percentage of people used them, but I would argue that even if a single person did, a rugpull is certainly a shitty experience for them. It also has a network effect, where if other people see that developers did that, they are likely to believe that something similar in the future can happen again. Once trust is lost, it's very difficult to gain it back.
> Second, its likely that even fewer of them contributed anything at all to the project in general, and those features in particular. What claim do they have to anything - especially when it was just freely given to them, and not actually taken away (the code is still there)?
I think this is a very hostile mentality to have as an OSS developer. Delaney himself expressed something similar in that Reddit thread[1]:
> I expect nothing from you and you in turn should expect nothing from me.
This is wrong on many levels.
When a software project is published, whether as open source or otherwise, a contract is established between developers and potential users. This is formalized by the chosen license, but even without it, there is an unwritten contract. At a fundamental level, it states that users can expect the software to do what it advertises to do. I.e. that it solves a particular problem or serves a particular purpose, which is the point of all software. In turn, at the very least, the developer can expect the project's existence to serve as an advertisement of their brand. Whether they decide to monetize this or not, there's a reason they decide to publish it in the first place. It could be to boost their portfolio, which can help them land jobs, or in other more direct ways.
So when that contract is broken, which for OSS typically happens by the developer, you can understand why users would be upset.
Furthermore, the idea that because users are allowed to use the software without any financial obligations they should have no functional expectations of the software is incredibly user hostile. It's akin to the proverb "don't look a gift horse in the mouth", which boils down to "I can make this project as shitty as I want to, and you can't say anything about it". At that point, if you don't care about listening to your users, why even bother releasing software? Why choose to preserve user freedoms on one hand, but on the other completely alienate and ignore them? It doesn't make sense.
As for your point about the code still being there, that may be technically true. But you're essentially asking users to stick with a specific version of the software that will be unmaintained moving forward, as you focus on the shiny new product (the one with the complete rewrite). That's unrealistic for many reasons.
> And to the extent that they can't or wont fix it themselves, what happens if the dev just says "im no longer maintaining datastar anymore"?
That's an entirely separate scenario. If a project is not maintained anymore, it can be archived, or maintenance picked up by someone else. Software can be considered functionally complete and require little maintenance, but in the fast moving world of web development, that is practically impossible. A web framework, no matter how simple, will break eventually, most likely in a matter of months.
> Finally, if they cant fix it themselves (especially when AI could almost certainly fix it rapidly), should they really be developing anything?
Are you serious? You expect people who want to build a web site and move on with their lives to dig into a foreign code base, and fix the web framework? It doesn't matter how simple or complex it is. The fact you think this is a valid argument, and additionally insult their capability is wild to me. Bringing up "AI" is laughable.
> Again, most of the furor is quite clearly performative.
Again, it's really not. A few people (that we know of) were directly impacted by this, and the network effect of that has tarnished the trust other people had in the project. Doubling down on this, ignoring and dismissing such feedback as "performative", can only further harm the project. Which is a shame, as I truly do want it to gain traction, even if that is not the authors' goal.
Anyway, I wish you and the authors well. Your intentions seem to come from the right place, but I think this entire thing is a misstep.
The sibling comment already thoroughly addressed all of this, so there's no need to me to do so other than to say that, despite your good intentions, you don't seem to have even the slightest understanding of open source.
> despite your good intentions, you don't seem to have even the slightest understanding of open source
Please. Resorting to ad hominem when you don't have good arguments against someone's opinion is intellectually lazy.
> At no point does it say anything like "I am obliged to maintain this for you forever, or even at all, let alone to your liking"
I'm well familiar with most OSS licenses. I never claimed they said this.
My point was about an unwritten social contract of not being an asshole. When you do a public deed, such as publishing OSS, and that project gains users, you have certain obligations to those users at a more fundamental level than the license you chose, whether you want to acknowledge this or not.
When you ignore and intentionally alienate users, you can't be surprised when you receive backlash for it. We can blame this on users and say that they're greedy, and that as a developer you're allowed to do whatever you want, becuase—hey, these people are leeching off your hard work!—but that's simply hostile.
The point of free software is to provide a good to the world. If your intention is to just throw something over the fence and not take users into consideration—which are ultimately the main reason we build and publish software in the first place—then you're simply abusing this relationship. You want to reap the benefits of exposure that free software provides, while having zero obligations. That's incredibly entitled, and it would've been better for everyone involved if you had kept the software private.
There's literally no ad hominem where you claimed there was. That itself is ad hominem.
I'll go further this time - not only do you not understand open source licensing or ecosystem even slightly, but it's genuinely concerning that you think that someone sharing some code somehow creates "a relationship" with anyone who looks at it. The point of free software is free software, and the good to the world is whatever people make of that.
Again, the only people who seem to be truly bothered by any of this are people who don't use datastar.
Don't use it. In fact, I suspect that the datastar maintainers would prefer that you, specifically, don't use it. Use it to spite them! We don't care.
I also retract my statement about you having good intentions/communicating in good faith. I won't respond to you again.
> the only people who seem to be truly bothered by any of this are people who don't use datastar.
Yeah, those silly people who were previously interested in Datastar, and are criticizing the hostility of how this was handled. Who cares what they think?
> Don't use it. We don't care. In fact, I suspect that the datastar maintainers would prefer that you, specifically, don't use it.
Too bad. I'll use it to spite all of you!
> I also retract my statement about you having good intentions/communicating in good faith.
> a rugpull is certainly a shitty experience for them
It would certainly be a shitty experience, if there actually was a rugpull, which there was not. People who were using the version of Datastar that had all those features are still free to keep using that version. No one is taking it away. No rug was pulled.
> a contract is established between developers and potential users
Sorry, but no. The license makes this quite clear–every open source license in the world very explicitly says 'NO WARRANTY' in very big letters. 'No warranty' means 'no expectations'. Please, don't be one of those people who try to peer-pressure open source developers into providing free software support. Don't be one of the people who says that 'exposure' is a kind of payment. I can't put food on my table with 'exposure'. If you think 'exposure' by itself can be monetized, I'm sorry but you are not being realistic. Go and actually work on monetizing an open source project before you make these kinds of claims.
> why even bother releasing software?
Much research and study is not useful for many people. Why even bother doing research and development? Because there are some who might find it useful and convert it into something that works for themselves. Open source software is a gift. The giving of the gift does not place obligations on the giver. If you give someone a sweater, are you expected to keep patching it whenever it develops holes?
> If a project is not maintained anymore, it can be archived, or maintenance picked up by someone else.
Then why can't it be maintained by someone else in the case of using the old free version?
> A web framework, no matter how simple, will break eventually, most likely in a matter of months.
Sure, the ones that depend on a huge npm transitive dependency cone can. But libraries or frameworks like htmx and Datastar are not like that, they are single <script> files that you include directly in your HTML. There is no endless treadmill of npm packages that get obsoleted or have security advisories all the time.
> You expect people who want to build a web site and move on with their lives to dig into a foreign code base, and fix the web framework?
Well...ultimately, if I use some open source software, I am actually responsible for it. Especially if it's for a commercial use case. I can't just leech off the free work of others to fix or maintain the software to my needs. I need to either fix my own issues or pay someone to do it. If the upstream project happens to do it for me, I'm in luck. But that's all it is. There is ultimately no expectation that open source maintainers will support me for free, perpetually, when I use their software.
> A few people (that we know of) were directly impacted by this
What impact? One guy blogged that just because there are some paid features, it automatically kills the whole project for him. There's no clear articulation of why exactly he needs those exact paid features. Everything else we've seen in this thread is pile-ons.
> Doubling down on this, ignoring and dismissing such feedback as "performative"
Aren't you doing the same thing? You have been ignoring and dismissing the feedback that this is actually not that big of a deal. Why do you think that your opinion carries more weight than that of the actual maintainers and users of the project?
The open core part of the project was removed from NPM. Available only on GitHub.
There are no published plugins from the community, nor is there a repo where the community could have collaborated on OSS adding/plugins.
Are people being entitled expecting it ? Yes.
Is there something stopping people from taking up this work and creating a repo ? No.
But it is illustrative of the attitude of the owners.
The point is not to accuse of rug pull but how confident is the community in taking a dependency on such a project. The fact that the lead dev had to write an article responding to misunderstandings is in response to what the community feels about this.
The argument on their discord for licensing for professional teams 'contact us for pricing' goes like it depends on the number of employees in the company including non-tech folks.
Our community is fine, all this is coming from people so far that haven't actually used Datastar on project at any kind of scale. If this is not the case please show your code and how it effected you directly. Otherwise, it's false outrage that I and the core team care zero about.
> People who were using the version of Datastar that had all those features are still free to keep using that version.
Why are you ignoring my previous comment that contradicts this opinion?
> No one is taking it away. No rug was pulled.
When Redis changed licenses to SSPL/RSAL, users were also free to continue using the BSD-licensed version. Was that not a rug pull?
In practice, it doesn't matter whether the entire project was relicensed, or if parts of it were paywalled. Users were depending on a piece of software one day, and the next they were forced to abide by new terms if they want to continue receiving updates to it. That's the very definition of a rug pull. Of course nobody is claiming that developers physically took the software people were using away—that's ridiculous.
> Sorry, but no. The license makes this quite clear
My argument was beyond any legal licensing terms. It's about not being an asshole to your users.
> I can't put food on my table with 'exposure'.
That wasn't the core of my argument, but you sure can. Any public deed builds a brand and reputation, which in turn can lead to financial opportunities. I'm not saying the act of publishing OSS is enough to "put food on your table", but it can be monetized in many ways.
> Open source software is a gift. The giving of the gift does not place obligations on the giver. If you give someone a sweater, are you expected to keep patching it whenever it develops holes?
Jesus. There's so many things wrong with these statements, that I don't know where to start...
OSS is most certainly not a "gift". What a ridiculous thing to say. It's a philosophy and approach of making computers accessible and friendly to use for everyone. It's about building meaningful relationships between people in ways that we can all collectivelly build a better future for everyone.
Seeing OSS as a plain transaction, where users should have absolutely no expectations beyond arbitrary license terms, is no better than publishing proprietary software. Using it to promote your brand while ignoring your users is a corruption of this philosophy.
> Then why can't it be maintained by someone else in the case of using the old free version?
I addressed this in my previous comment.
> Sure, the ones that depend on a huge npm transitive dependency cone can. But libraries or frameworks like htmx and Datastar are not like that
Eh, no. Libraries with less dependencies will naturally require less maintenance, but are not maintenance-free. Browsers frequently change. SDK language ecosystems frequently change. Software doesn't exist in a vacuum, and it is incredibly difficult to maintain backwards compatibility over time. Ask Microsoft. In the web world, it's practically impossible.
> What impact? One guy [...]
Yeah, fuck that guy.
> Everything else we've seen in this thread is pile-ons.
Have you seen Reddit? But clearly, everyone who disagrees is "piling on".
> Aren't you doing the same thing? You have been ignoring and dismissing the feedback that this is actually not that big of a deal. Why do you think that your opinion carries more weight than that of the actual maintainers and users of the project?
Huh? I'm pointing out why I think this was a bad move, and why the negative feedback is expected. You can disagree with it, if you want, but at no point did I claim that my opinion carries more weight than anyone else's.
> Why are you ignoring my previous comment that contradicts this opinion?
Because it doesn't contradict it, it just disagrees with it. Because what actual argument did you have that people using an old version of the software can't keep using it? The one about things constantly breaking? On the web, the platform that's famously stable and backward-compatible? Sorry, I just don't find that believable for projects like htmx and Datastar which are very self-contained and use basic features of the web platform, not crazy things like WebSQL for example.
> When Redis changed licenses to SSPL/RSAL, users were also free to continue using the BSD-licensed version. Was that not a rug pull?
Firstly, there are tons of people on old versions of Redis who didn't even upgrade through all that and weren't even impacted. Secondly, Redis forks sprang up almost immediately, which is exactly what you yourself said was a viable path forward in an earlier comment–someone new could take over maintaining it. That's effectively what happened with Valkey.
> My argument was beyond any legal licensing terms.
And my argument is that there is no 'beyond' legal licensing terms, the terms are quite clear and you agree to them when you start using the software. In your opinion should it be standard practice for people to weasel their way out of agreed license terms after the fact?
> Any public deed builds a brand and reputation, which in turn can lead to financial opportunities.
Notice that you're missing quite a lot of steps there, and even then you can only end with 'can lead' to financial opportunities. Why? Because there's no guarantee that anyone will be able to monetize exposure. No serious person would claim that that uncertain outcome constitutes any kind of 'contract'. Anyone who does should be rightly called out.
> It's about building meaningful relationships between people in ways that we can all collectivelly build a better future for everyone.
Then by your own logic shouldn't everyone contribute to that effort? Why is it that only the one guy who creates the project must bear the burden of maintaining all of it in perpetuity?
> Seeing OSS as a plain transaction
Isn't that what you are doing by claiming that OSS is about providing software in exchange for exposure?
> Yeah, fuck that guy.
The guy who didn't even explain what exactly he lost by not being able to use the new paywalled features? The guy who likely was not impacted at all, and was just ranting on his blog because he didn't like someone monetizing their own project? You want us to take that guy seriously?
> everyone who disagrees is "piling on".
Everyone who disagrees? Yeah. Anyone who provides a coherent argument about exactly what they are missing out on by not being able to afford the paid version? I would take them seriously. I haven't seen anyone like that here.
Ive made similar points to the maintainers. It is what it is at this point.
But, honestly, to the people who actually understand, like and use Datastar, none of this matters. Most of the outrage is performative, at best - as can be seen by the pathetically superficial quality of the vast majority of criticisms in threads like this.
Frankly, if people can't/won't see that the devs are very clearly not VC rugpull assholes, and that the vast majority of the functionality is available for free, then they're probably also the sorts of people who aren't a good fit for something that is doing a great rethink of web development. The devs very explicitly are not trying to get rich (nor can they, due to the 501c3!) nor do they want this to be something massive - they're building it for their own needs, first and foremost, and for those who understand that vision.
I tried to understand this, but it seems like a non-native English speaker met an LLM and used it to create a blog post. Can someone please explain why this exists?
Blog post author here. I never expect my blog post to get this much attention. I was emotional when I wrote that blog because I had spent a couple weeks to rewrite a service for self use. And the service was almost completely migrated to datastar from htmx.
I was facing a situation where I either need to stuck with the beta, or paying a pro version, as I was using the replace-url function a lot.
I was emotionally feeling betrayed. I went to the datastar reddit thread to raise my doubt that whether there would be more features that I rely on in the free version would be stripped out and be put behind the paywall. I was fine to convert my service to purely free tier features, when my service is stable and usable, I was very willing to buy a pro license.
But you know what? The datastar author jumped out and stated two points. He said the release version of datastar is a full rewrite, if I am not paying, I could stay in beta or fork it. And in open source world, he owned me nothing. Very legit points.
However, the real reason behind that fuck you statement is that I was attacked by the datastar discord members multiple times. In one of the humiliating replies I got, that guy said some one in the discord server told them to show support to datastar. Instead of supporting, they just mocked me and called me a troll as if I was an obstacle to their potential success, multiple people, multiple times.
I noticed some comments in the thread said that I don't know how to use version control, or ignorant towards software license. Well, I do use version control and occasionally contribute to open source projects. I am a doctor, I may not be as skillful as you all, but I do know some basics in programming.
Our Discord is generally a friendly place, but not the nicest. If you can't backup your ideas or defend your code with metrics you are gonna have a bad time. We help those that help yourself. IIRC you were forcefully tell how things should work so it'd be more like HTMX. We tend to go tit for tat so go back and look if we were actively dissuading you from bad ideas.
I did not propose anything or push any ideas. I have only asked two questions, one was about the best practice of using datastar with go templ, one was expressing my doubt that whether more features will be behind paywall.
I got personal attacks, publicly or by DMs. A guy told me that they were told to defend the project.
The only nice thing I got from them was an alternative method to imitate replace-url function using only free-tier features.
> A guy told me that they were told to defend the project.
Might be nice if you can back that up. I see no drshapeless in our Discord logs.
> he only nice thing I got from them was an alternative method to imitate replace-url function using only free-tier features.
So we did give you an alternative to you going against how the framework is suppose to work.
Yeah that tracks with writing that blog. Good luck to ya, Datastar is definitely not a good fit.
People can develop open source equivalents you know, you're not required to use the pro version to get a certain feature. From my understanding, datastar was designed to be entirely modular and extensible.
> I had a running service written in htmx for some time. It is a clinic opening hour service to inform my patients when I will be available in which clinic. (Yes, I am not a programmer, but a healthcare professional.)
-> that was pretty freaking cool to read, loved it
also chuckled at the idea of my website making, health professional going all "What the fuck." in front of his codebase.
what was taken from you? point to the source history that's been removed please. It's funny that stuff like this means people won't ever develop in the open. Hope that makes y'all happy
I was looking for a tool to follow along with signal patches and was a bit disappointed to see the inspector is under "pro"- that and the query string sync are the two nice-to-haves.
and youre in your right to fork the pre-pro versions of the now-pro plugins, update them to be compatible with the current version of the open-source course (a surely trivial task) and share them with the world. You can call your plugin pack d-free
I'm not referring to the language barrier - I live in a place where I write and speak at a juvenile level. I'm referring to the very low quality of thinking on display in the article, and in this reply (english is not from the US of A. And, moreover, the level of literacy in that country is nothing to envy)
Which states some of the basic (great) functionality of Datastar has been moved to the Datastar Pro product (?!).
I’m eager to support an open source product financially and think the framework author is great, but the precedent this establishes isn’t great.