Comment by zachlloyd
20 hours ago
Warp founder here. Totally understood on the feedback - one thing I would call out is that we actually worked with Alacritty on the initial implementation and they were super helpful and we are grateful for their support.
I sort of can't tell if this is supposed to be a joke or not. It seems like you're explaining that in addition to not supporting the project from which your company spawned 50M, they also supplied free work for which they were never compensated. That's supposed to be better or something?
There's an interview that got scrubbed from the internet with Zach on the 20VC podcast with Harry Stebbings. This comment and its lack of self-awareness exemplify what was on display for 60 minutes.
Zach is undoubtedly smart but for anyone who is not an SV insider, they would listen to that podcast they same way you are looking at this comment and wonder if it's all one big joke.
Found it here: https://www.podbean.com/media/share/dir-e3n2c-28221400
The host is absolutely insufferable.
1 reply →
> free work for which they were never compensated. That's supposed to be better or something?
It's almost the "success" definition in the business language, isn't it?
So if I use vim or emacs for free, or VS Code for that matter, I have to hunt down the maintainers and pay them? Do I need to empty my wallet for every project I use for free? Because that's not sustainable for normal people, let alone businesses.
If you use them for free to spawn a 50M business, yeah, give back a little. Nobody's saying every user should open their wallet, let alone "empty" it as you hyperbolate.
I don't have particularly strong preference for copyleft (I use the Apache license for my personal projects), but these don't seem like particularly compelling arguments.
> So if I use vim or emacs for free, or VS Code for that matter
Vim and emacs both use licenses that require you to share any source code modifications if you distribute binaries that you change, so that's kind of a strange comparison. You literally couldn't do the things that Warp did with Alacritty. As for VS Code, it seems pretty disingenuous to compare a single solo developer to a multi-trillion dollar company.
> I have to hunt down the maintainers and pay them?
I don't understand why you think it would be hard to "hunt down" someone when an email is literally in every commit in the git history of open source software.
> Do I need to empty my wallet for every project I use for free? Because that's not sustainable for normal people
Most "normal people" do not have access to $50 million of VC money
> let alone businesses
Paying the developer of the one piece of software that they forked for the entire basis of their business $100,000 of the VC money would not meaningfully have hurt their ability to succeed. They could have just as easily reached the same level of success they have now with $49.9 million.
3 replies →
Why wouldn't you throw them a few bucks? Especially if your multi-million dollar business is basically a vim clone entirely based on their source...
3 replies →
> Not sustainable for normal people, let alone people
I hope you are aware of the fact a business makes way more money than a "normal" person?
2 replies →
Donating to the free software you use, even a little, is good.
1 reply →
I mean, if they have a working relationship with each other then I guess the alacritty folks don't hate their guts. That's meaningful from my perspective.
Also remember that the $50m is not revenue that they can use however they want. They have an obligation to their investors to make money with it.
> They have an obligation to their investors to make money with it.
It's bit more nuanced. The company management have fiducial responsibilities to the investors but also have responsibility to the company itself and its employees. E.g. Milton Friedman's shared-holder primacy is a crap philosophy and one of the most damaging ones to actual healthy free market economies. For example, in corporate bankruptcy in the US workers get paid before shareholders.
The courts have also tended to favor the company management as long as they're acting reasonably, so I've read. IANAL, but it shouldn't be too hard to say hey this support contract for a core piece of software reduces risk for us by X, Y or helps get Z feature.
1 reply →
The charitable read is that the original project team willingly worked with Warp, knowing the direction they were going. I don't know any background on the drama FWIW.
that's the correct read - we shared what we were building and they helped us integrate alacritty. it's similar to how mitchell h reached out and asked today if we wanted to integrate ghostty.
we have a lot of open source library dependencies and are grateful to the folks who worked on them
4 replies →
if you’re actually grateful for their support maybe you could support them with some donations out of that 50 million
Alacritty doesn't accept donations.
Doesn't that make not supporting them even worse???
I feel obligated to chime in here a bit. I was the Alacritty member who was contacted and who offered some feedback.
I have absolutely no hard feelings.
Would it have been a good idea to charge them for my time, IDK. I was in between a research role and a new job at the time and more than happy to help. Do I feel like I missed out on something, maybe a little bit, but that's more on me than them. I'm sure if I had angled for a position working for or with them, they would have considered it seriously.
Would it be nice to have more support for Alacritty, perhaps. But there are a lot of conflicting opinions on what to work on and what features are good for the project, so it's not as simple as just adding money and people. I was always hoping alacritty could be a minimal library others could use, and I'm glad it has turned out that way.
thanks for the support here. we are very grateful for the help you all provided initially, and if you are interested in sponsorship for the repo, we are also happy to provide some. alacritty is awesome
The takes in this thread are insane. There’s nowhere else to put this comment given the framing so I’m putting it here. OSS isn’t a charity movement.
Toss a coin to your Witcher
> Totally understood on the feedback [...] we are grateful for their support
So are you going to donate to them or not?
Alacritty doesn't accept donations.
This isn't feedback. This is saying your company and your leadership are absolutely toxic to the tech community if this is how you treat people that made you wealthy.
It's disgusting behavior.
you shouldn’t be surprised though. most people in tech only care about money and you already know if you align yourself with Altman, your morals already aren’t in the right place.
This should be banned on this platform. If you are against Altman or his values or morals, that is fine, but calling others who do feel aligned with him immoral… well that kind of hate leads to attempts on Altman’s life of which we have already seen one. You better stop with this behaviour before you encourage others to do actions that you will regret
4 replies →
talk is cheap ...