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@mholt is being exceedingly generous to the whingers on this thread, on top of the generosity he's shown in writing Caddy to start with. It's not 2005 any more

@mholt is being exceedingly generous to the whingers on this thread, on top of the generosity he's shown in writing Caddy to start with. It's not 2005 any more, Sun Microsystems is long gone. You won't raise any money from a business model that gives away your best work or selling support contracts alone. Caddy is a real innovation, and brings web server defaults bang up to date - it makes loads of complex configuration easy. It's already distributed in the finest tradition of free software - a liberal source code license with no restrictions. You can do what you want with it. Like GNU in the 80s and OpenBSD in the 90s, Matt is selling the most convenient package and yeah - if that's the one you used and relied on for your infrastructure, you've got to pay, and not very much. Matt has clearly worked hard at making that payment support as much as possible in terms of convenient corporate deployment. I really hope that works out well, and am glad it's a business model that supports Free software without any compromises.

unethical_ban 9y ago
Eh. Still kind of shitty to have had access and then have it removed, and then say 'nothing has really changed, guys!'. If they rephrased it to admit they're moving to a Red Hat model of "pay for binary", the news would have fared better. More straightforward, with a direct comparison to a current, successful brand. Let's face it: They realized their product was popular, took advantage of tons of interest and documentation/blogs/hype in the community, then decided to charge for binary distribution. It's a bit of a burn.
- pheeney 9y ago
  > Let's face it: They realized their product was popular, took advantage of tons of interest and documentation/blogs/hype in the community, then decided to charge for binary distribution. It's a bit of a burn. Or another way of looking at it: Open source has to be subsidized (either through free time or commercial backing) in order to continue to contribute to open source. The amount of time and effort to maintain a popular open source product is insane. They are creating a business model to continue to subsidize their open source contributions. Whats the alternative? Burnout and stagnation which would just result in forks and fracturing of the community if they are lucky.
  - throwa34943way 9y ago
    > Open source has to be subsidized Yep and Caddy was, $50.000 in 2016 from Mozilla https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2016/06/22/mozilla-awards-385000-to-open-source-projects-as-part-of-moss-mission-partners-program/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2016/06/22/mozilla-awards-3850...
    - always_good 9y ago
      You say that like you think they're set for life...
      - throwa34943way 9y ago
        All I say is Mozilla granting $50.000 on the premise of a project being free software is a lot of money given to a commercial product.
        pheeney 9y ago
        They are still open source right? Or does having a commercial version invalidate what they have open sourced?
- pushcx 9y ago
  Yes, he gave you free stuff and then reduced how much free stuff he gave you. That must be very hard on you.
  - unethical_ban 9y ago
    Your comment might have had value if you hadn't been sarcastic.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
hsod 9y ago
I agree strongly with this. If you use Caddy but don't pay for it or contribute to it's development then your criticism of the developers should reflect that imbalance.
exhilaration 9y ago
For the curious or non-British: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/whingers http://www.thefreedictionary.com/whingers
fooey 9y ago
What I think is interesting, is the licensing model is basically reverse whaling The bigger the company is, the more likely they are to go with just building Caddy themselves instead of paying for it. So, the only people who need to run the commercial binaries are the situations where the licensing costs actually matter. Maybe I'm underestimating the size of the demographic they're targeting, but it seems to me that the only market for Caddy is a fairly small niche of people who are unwilling/unable to run NGINX or set up their own build process.
- georgebarnett 9y ago
  I disagree. Big companies are where they're going to buy the licenses because in those companies time is often more kmportnant than budget so you just buy stuff. Another reason is that as soon as other teams become involved you get comments like "this bug is yours because you self compiled this thing", or "we have to buy the vendors version", etc etc. It's not logical and is basically arse covering. Buying the vendor version is an easy way to shoot down a whole category of stupid internal politics.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - camus2 9y ago
    > Big companies are where they're going to buy the licenses because in those companies time is often more kmportnant than budget so you just buy stuff. It doesn't work quite like that. Unless you're friend with the guy who decides who the checks are signed to, or you are already an established brand or your product provides a value so big it's a no-brainer, nobody in a big company will invest in your solution. If the company can get your product for free it will. Caddy is trying to cash in on a product that is young, that has everything to prove, while at the same time pissing off the people it relies on to acquire an "audience", the users of the open source version, it never ends well. The right way to do it is, to leave the open source version as it is, without any license change, while creating a new product,closed source, suited for enterprise. > "this bug is yours because you self compiled this thing", never heard anything like that in my life. > Buying the vendor version is an easy way to shoot down a whole category of stupid internal politics. If you have the power to do so at your business by all means. Buying into a commercial product also require a crazy amount of politics as well, especially if it's a recurring payment PER month PER instance at a minimum of $50, so more than the price of a basic VM on Amazon.
throwa34943way 9y ago
> @mholt is being exceedingly generous to the whingers on this thread, on top of the generosity he's shown in writing Caddy to start with. Mholt got $50.000 from Mozilla to maintain an open source project as well. It should factor into the discussion. https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2016/06/22/mozilla-awards-385000-to-open-source-projects-as-part-of-moss-mission-partners-program/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2016/06/22/mozilla-awards-3850... The only generous people here is Mozilla, especially when they financed a commercial project with open source grants.

unethical_ban 9y ago

Eh. Still kind of shitty to have had access and then have it removed, and then say 'nothing has really changed, guys!'. If they rephrased it to admit they're moving to a Red Hat model of "pay for binary", the news would have fared better. More straightforward, with a direct comparison to a current, successful brand. Let's face it: They realized their product was popular, took advantage of tons of interest and documentation/blogs/hype in the community, then decided to charge for binary distribution. It's a bit of a burn.

pheeney 9y ago
> Let's face it: They realized their product was popular, took advantage of tons of interest and documentation/blogs/hype in the community, then decided to charge for binary distribution. It's a bit of a burn. Or another way of looking at it: Open source has to be subsidized (either through free time or commercial backing) in order to continue to contribute to open source. The amount of time and effort to maintain a popular open source product is insane. They are creating a business model to continue to subsidize their open source contributions. Whats the alternative? Burnout and stagnation which would just result in forks and fracturing of the community if they are lucky.
- throwa34943way 9y ago
  > Open source has to be subsidized Yep and Caddy was, $50.000 in 2016 from Mozilla https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2016/06/22/mozilla-awards-385000-to-open-source-projects-as-part-of-moss-mission-partners-program/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2016/06/22/mozilla-awards-3850...
  - always_good 9y ago
    You say that like you think they're set for life...
    - throwa34943way 9y ago
      All I say is Mozilla granting $50.000 on the premise of a project being free software is a lot of money given to a commercial product.
      - pheeney 9y ago
        They are still open source right? Or does having a commercial version invalidate what they have open sourced?
pushcx 9y ago
Yes, he gave you free stuff and then reduced how much free stuff he gave you. That must be very hard on you.
- unethical_ban 9y ago
  Your comment might have had value if you hadn't been sarcastic.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

hsod 9y ago

I agree strongly with this. If you use Caddy but don't pay for it or contribute to it's development then your criticism of the developers should reflect that imbalance.

exhilaration 9y ago

For the curious or non-British: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/whingers http://www.thefreedictionary.com/whingers

fooey 9y ago

What I think is interesting, is the licensing model is basically reverse whaling The bigger the company is, the more likely they are to go with just building Caddy themselves instead of paying for it. So, the only people who need to run the commercial binaries are the situations where the licensing costs actually matter. Maybe I'm underestimating the size of the demographic they're targeting, but it seems to me that the only market for Caddy is a fairly small niche of people who are unwilling/unable to run NGINX or set up their own build process.

georgebarnett 9y ago
I disagree. Big companies are where they're going to buy the licenses because in those companies time is often more kmportnant than budget so you just buy stuff. Another reason is that as soon as other teams become involved you get comments like "this bug is yours because you self compiled this thing", or "we have to buy the vendors version", etc etc. It's not logical and is basically arse covering. Buying the vendor version is an easy way to shoot down a whole category of stupid internal politics.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- camus2 9y ago
  > Big companies are where they're going to buy the licenses because in those companies time is often more kmportnant than budget so you just buy stuff. It doesn't work quite like that. Unless you're friend with the guy who decides who the checks are signed to, or you are already an established brand or your product provides a value so big it's a no-brainer, nobody in a big company will invest in your solution. If the company can get your product for free it will. Caddy is trying to cash in on a product that is young, that has everything to prove, while at the same time pissing off the people it relies on to acquire an "audience", the users of the open source version, it never ends well. The right way to do it is, to leave the open source version as it is, without any license change, while creating a new product,closed source, suited for enterprise. > "this bug is yours because you self compiled this thing", never heard anything like that in my life. > Buying the vendor version is an easy way to shoot down a whole category of stupid internal politics. If you have the power to do so at your business by all means. Buying into a commercial product also require a crazy amount of politics as well, especially if it's a recurring payment PER month PER instance at a minimum of $50, so more than the price of a basic VM on Amazon.

throwa34943way 9y ago

> @mholt is being exceedingly generous to the whingers on this thread, on top of the generosity he's shown in writing Caddy to start with. Mholt got $50.000 from Mozilla to maintain an open source project as well. It should factor into the discussion. https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2016/06/22/mozilla-awards-385000-to-open-source-projects-as-part-of-moss-mission-partners-program/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2016/06/22/mozilla-awards-3850... The only generous people here is Mozilla, especially when they financed a commercial project with open source grants.