5 ms·

Hi HN. Here's my own announcement with some details: https://caddy.community/t/caddy-and-certmagic-have-new-ownership-no-changes-to-licensing-or-development/975

by mholt 6y ago

Hi HN. Here's my own announcement with some details: https://caddy.community/t/caddy-and-certmagic-have-new-ownership-no-changes-to-licensing-or-development/9754?u=matt https://caddy.community/t/caddy-and-certmagic-have-new-owner... Please note that there are no changes to licensing, and this transfer actually happened about six months ago. I'm quite happy about this. We're already seeing some great things. For example, in Caddy 2.2 there will be native ZeroSSL ACME support (with Let's Encrypt still being the default, because ZeroSSL requires EAB) -- which is appealing because ZeroSSL doesn't have tight rate limits like Let's Encrypt does. It's also good to diversify the ACME CA ecosystem a little bit. I'm also less stressed and outputting better quality work this year. (Compare the code base from Caddy 1 with that of Caddy 2 and you'll see what I mean.) We have more committed maintainers as well due to its growth and stability, which I'm very grateful to all who contribute!

freedomben 6y ago
Thanks for posting this. I had immediate fear and this made much of it go away.
Semaphor 6y ago
Good to hear and thanks for your (and others) work on Caddy, it’s always been fun to use for my self-hosted setup :)
- mholt 6y ago
  Glad it's fun! Home projects should be enjoyable like that. Hopefully you can deploy it into production for your next work project too.
  - Semaphor 6y ago
    I’m afraid all our servers run on Windows and use IIS ;)
    - mholt 6y ago
      Caddy runs great on Windows! But the integration with OS-specific features might not be super tight. What do you use from IIS that only IIS does?
      - Semaphor 6y ago
        Running 2 sites that use ASP.NET Webforms (in case you don’t know it, an 18-year-old technology that has a lot of problems and only runs on .NET Framework). I don’t think it’s a good fit for Caddy ;)
        francislavoie 6y ago
        Caddy can sit in front of it as a proxy, no problems. It can terminate TLS for you, and your existing server can do the rest of the heavy lifting for serving your site.
mikecsh 6y ago
Congratulations - well deserved result for a really great project
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
michaelbuckbee 6y ago
Very cool Matt!
narrationbox 6y ago
Congratulations Matt! Big fans of Caddy here at Narration Box. The reverse proxy setup and strong defaults are unmatched and are a joy to use. My favourite feature is the Cloudflare Let's Encrypt DNS-01 challenge integration, it makes adding TLS to internal networks a lot easier for devices like the iPhone/iPad where the cert store is heavily locked down.
- mholt 6y ago
  Excellent, I'm glad it's working well for you! Thanks for the feedback.
- g8oz 6y ago
  I'd love to see a write up on this setup.
  - narrationbox 6y ago
    It is coming soon. We all post it here and on twitter when it's ready. https://twitter.com/narrationbox https://twitter.com/narrationbox
dmitryminkovsky 6y ago
Caddy is awesome. Thanks a lot.
mceachen 6y ago
Congrats and thanks for your work on Caddy! Great news that apilayer wants to keep it open source, and even better news that you can be less stressed and be happier about your work.
domano 6y ago
Thanks for the clarification and thanks for all the great work! Wish you and Caddy all the best for the future :)
tmpz22 6y ago
Just want to say from afar this project has been an inspiration and reflection of true tech entrepreneurship, with all the struggles, stepbacks, and ultimately hard earned successes, that isn’t seen in the typical Herman-Miller VC model so popularly touted on HN and other tech circles. Your accessibility, community building, and consistency is one I hope to emulate in my future projects. Hope the deal announced here gives you the financial security you deserve and that caddy remains in the space for a long time.
truthwhisperer 6y ago
how much did you get?
no_wizard 6y ago
Question I have about Caddy. Is it usable as a module? Could I use it as a library and have full access to its API or can I only really use it as a binary? The possibility of building a web server framework on top of it is very interesting to me if the entire API is also programmatically accessible
- mholt 6y ago
  I mean, technically yes, since the only the Caddy's `main()` does is call a function that parses CLI args; all of Caddy's logic is in importable packages. But in order to be useful you'd have to have a config document (usually JSON, or some other supported format through Config Adapters) to pass into either `Load()` or `Run()`: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/caddyserver/caddy/v2?tab=doc#Load https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/caddyserver/caddy/v2?tab=doc#L... But most people do it the other way around: write a Go program or library and then make it a Caddy module: https://caddyserver.com/docs/extending-caddy https://caddyserver.com/docs/extending-caddy
  - no_wizard 6y ago
    Nothing wrong with having to pass in a config, though it’s a question of control for me, like being able to use the full power of Go to handle complex scenarios, hot loading modules etc. Have you given this any serious consideration making it more API friendly for developers in this way? My issue with modules is you will inherently be limited at a certain point
    - mholt 6y ago
      If you need that much or absolute control, I'd recommend don't use a framework or high-level library at all. As for specific features or functionality, feel free to ask on our forums in more detail, or request it on the issue tracker. I don't really know what "complex scenarios" entails here, or "hot loading modules" can mean a lot of things.
patates 6y ago
I didn't know what EAB is, and it was hard to google: https://ietf-wg-acme.github.io/acme/draft-ietf-acme-acme.html#rfc.section.7.3.4 https://ietf-wg-acme.github.io/acme/draft-ietf-acme-acme.htm...

by mholt 6y ago

freedomben 6y ago

Thanks for posting this. I had immediate fear and this made much of it go away.

Semaphor 6y ago

Good to hear and thanks for your (and others) work on Caddy, it’s always been fun to use for my self-hosted setup :)

mholt 6y ago
Glad it's fun! Home projects should be enjoyable like that. Hopefully you can deploy it into production for your next work project too.
- Semaphor 6y ago
  I’m afraid all our servers run on Windows and use IIS ;)
  - mholt 6y ago
    Caddy runs great on Windows! But the integration with OS-specific features might not be super tight. What do you use from IIS that only IIS does?
    - Semaphor 6y ago
      Running 2 sites that use ASP.NET Webforms (in case you don’t know it, an 18-year-old technology that has a lot of problems and only runs on .NET Framework). I don’t think it’s a good fit for Caddy ;)
      - francislavoie 6y ago
        Caddy can sit in front of it as a proxy, no problems. It can terminate TLS for you, and your existing server can do the rest of the heavy lifting for serving your site.

mikecsh 6y ago

Congratulations - well deserved result for a really great project

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

michaelbuckbee 6y ago

Very cool Matt!

narrationbox 6y ago

Congratulations Matt! Big fans of Caddy here at Narration Box. The reverse proxy setup and strong defaults are unmatched and are a joy to use. My favourite feature is the Cloudflare Let's Encrypt DNS-01 challenge integration, it makes adding TLS to internal networks a lot easier for devices like the iPhone/iPad where the cert store is heavily locked down.

mholt 6y ago
Excellent, I'm glad it's working well for you! Thanks for the feedback.
g8oz 6y ago
I'd love to see a write up on this setup.
- narrationbox 6y ago
  It is coming soon. We all post it here and on twitter when it's ready. https://twitter.com/narrationbox https://twitter.com/narrationbox

dmitryminkovsky 6y ago

Caddy is awesome. Thanks a lot.

mceachen 6y ago

Congrats and thanks for your work on Caddy! Great news that apilayer wants to keep it open source, and even better news that you can be less stressed and be happier about your work.

domano 6y ago

Thanks for the clarification and thanks for all the great work! Wish you and Caddy all the best for the future :)

tmpz22 6y ago

Just want to say from afar this project has been an inspiration and reflection of true tech entrepreneurship, with all the struggles, stepbacks, and ultimately hard earned successes, that isn’t seen in the typical Herman-Miller VC model so popularly touted on HN and other tech circles. Your accessibility, community building, and consistency is one I hope to emulate in my future projects. Hope the deal announced here gives you the financial security you deserve and that caddy remains in the space for a long time.

truthwhisperer 6y ago

how much did you get?

no_wizard 6y ago

Question I have about Caddy. Is it usable as a module? Could I use it as a library and have full access to its API or can I only really use it as a binary? The possibility of building a web server framework on top of it is very interesting to me if the entire API is also programmatically accessible

mholt 6y ago
I mean, technically yes, since the only the Caddy's `main()` does is call a function that parses CLI args; all of Caddy's logic is in importable packages. But in order to be useful you'd have to have a config document (usually JSON, or some other supported format through Config Adapters) to pass into either `Load()` or `Run()`: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/caddyserver/caddy/v2?tab=doc#Load https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/caddyserver/caddy/v2?tab=doc#L... But most people do it the other way around: write a Go program or library and then make it a Caddy module: https://caddyserver.com/docs/extending-caddy https://caddyserver.com/docs/extending-caddy
- no_wizard 6y ago
  Nothing wrong with having to pass in a config, though it’s a question of control for me, like being able to use the full power of Go to handle complex scenarios, hot loading modules etc. Have you given this any serious consideration making it more API friendly for developers in this way? My issue with modules is you will inherently be limited at a certain point
  - mholt 6y ago
    If you need that much or absolute control, I'd recommend don't use a framework or high-level library at all. As for specific features or functionality, feel free to ask on our forums in more detail, or request it on the issue tracker. I don't really know what "complex scenarios" entails here, or "hot loading modules" can mean a lot of things.

patates 6y ago

I didn't know what EAB is, and it was hard to google: https://ietf-wg-acme.github.io/acme/draft-ietf-acme-acme.html#rfc.section.7.3.4 https://ietf-wg-acme.github.io/acme/draft-ietf-acme-acme.htm...