Comment by pmarreck
5 days ago
I don't understand this attitude. Some humans have to eat and put a roof over their heads sometimes, and extracting consulting fees from open-source work (i.e. the Redhat model) is not always a paying business model. A hybrid model is often the best way to compromise.
Disclaimer: I'm pursuing a similar solution on an app I'm working on. The CLI will be free and open-source (and will have feature parity with the GUI), but charging money for the GUI will also help support that development (and put my son through school etc.)
And by "feature parity", I really mean it- The GUI will be translated into 22 languages... and so will the CLI. ;) (Claude initially argued against this feature. I made my arguments for it. It: "You make a compelling argument. Let's do it." LOL)
The lowest level of it is already available and fully open-source: https://github.com/pmarreck/validate
I'm building something on top of that which will have a nice GUI, do some other data integrity stuff, and also have a CLI. And will be for sale in the Mac and Windows app stores.
I also have to eat and put a roof over my head. Tying that to a system that can change permanently at any time to something less helpful is dangerous.
Preferring open source is a risk mitigation strategy. The closed alternative may have better features to make them worth that risk though.
One feature is: it's a business and won't be abandoned due to OSS but out if it has a sustainable way to continue.
Healthy and not extremely niche Free Software projects don't disappear. My software stack I rely on daily mostly barely changed in 15 and more years.
The amount of businesses closed, sold and products abandoned or swapped for the more controlled/exploitable ones is numerous, on the other hand.
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The (almost) opposite is also a feature: it's OSS and will still be available if the business goes out of business
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The bigger problem is that making software easy to use is stupidly expensive and hard and is usually the kind of work devs hate. So it’s usually not possible for free software to do it, hence free software usually makes no impact outside very technical circles.
Personally, I understand people need to make money but this tends to be a death spiral (enshittification). So I tend to go for solutions without those incentives at all. Or at least use the free self hosted option.
I wonder why you jumped into the mesh vpn market, it's so saturated. Theres literally hundreds of solutions out there (niche ones included for the mainstream ones it's probably 10 or so), many non profit options included. Is there really a niche you can offer that the others don't?
Edit: ah by doing the same thing you didn't necessarily mean a mesh vpn? I don't really understand what your thing does but not vpn.
I was just saying it because there's a new Show HN mesh VPN thing weekly now.
Another way to counteract enshittification is to pay for things, then stop paying when they enshittify.
just stop paying them, as though migrating to an alternative is free and easy
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That doesn't really help. It still happens. And you still need to move to something else. And they'll try to tie you in by making migration as tough as possible.
The logic of putting roof over the head is a point that is too broadly used is not at all valid for things like tailscale as... eventually most businesses at that level (tailscale revenue in 2025 was $45.2M) are crushing the customers. Either entshittification or lock-in. There is a loss of trust. The trust on SV/software is as much as bankers (during Lehmann bros crisis). Some people in HN think oh, we are growing small farmers/engineers from grassroots etc Yes, maybe - but their thinking is to exploit customers sooner or later. These smaller ones (as compared to FAANG etc) think that common man thinks that FAANG are the exploitative ones. But no. The public is getting aware that every damn calendar app or pdf viewer or router is increasing prices or wants subscription or planned obsolescence.
A roof over the head is OK but the price increases are usually to put private Yachts. The income earned by majority of these founders is already good to have lots of roofs.
Maybe my local corner coffee shop is one fellow I would not mind having subscription with...
Out of all the businesses to rant against for overcharging you are really going to focus on Tailscale?
So, the people building yachts also need to pay the bills. Or should the world not have yachts?
Am I supposed to care about the yachts?
> should the world not have yachts?
Maybe? Things like super yachts are just offensive.
Then ask all the billionares or people like you to give jobs/salaries/allowances/holidays at SV level to everyone in the world. Lets all build yachts. I am happy to get that level of pay.
So the perverse "logic" here is basically that since very successful products sometimes get enshittified, there is no point to seeking ANY success?
Do you realize how out-of-touch with reality this sounds? For every $45M Tailscale there's a hundred companies you likely never heard of making respectable but not-very-excessive money in niches here and there. For example, I have a high school friend who owns one: https://speedify.com Thing is, you can't have one without the other. Hell, that's the kind of success (as in "moderate") I'm actually targeting with my work. Which is why comments like this irritate me.
Go make something that other people want and then try to live off it. Offering all of it for free won't cut it, because we don't live in a communist dictatorship (not that any of them might approve you spending your time on your pie-in-the-sky "contributory idea" in the first place).
By the way, in working on the thing I want to sell, I've made a number of offshoot projects open source as a side effect. Check my github, it's never been more active.
They don't have access to the same information as us. There's another comment that replied to you who brought up enshittification. I guarantee you he has not read the blog post by apenwarr. Or even knows who apenwarr is.