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From https://www.ottoproject.io https://www.ottoproject.io It was an ambitious project, and we feel that it has not lived up to expectations. Rather th

From https://www.ottoproject.io https://www.ottoproject.io It was an ambitious project, and we feel that it has not lived up to expectations. Rather than having a public project that does not meet HashiCorp standards, we have decided to close source the project so we can rethink its design and implementation. The source code is still available for download, but Otto will no longer be actively maintained or supported. It looks like this is the successor to Otto, just with a bit of a different architecture. The thing I'm worried about in terms of considering trying/adopting it for any project is whether this will suffer the same fate, if it's not as successful as Hashicorp hopes. I don't want to learn new tools that give a small increase in efficiency if I don't have a guaranteed return on that effort and some reasonable confidence using that tool will help me in other areas too. Especially if the code behind the thing has the risk of going closed-source... it's kind of the Google problem (http://killedbygoogle.com http://killedbygoogle.com), and I really hope Hashicorp can avoid that (which they have, as they continue to support well-used even if not-flashy-anymore tools like Vagrant).

mitchellh 6y ago
The similarity between Otto and Waypoint are only skin deep: they both use the word "deploy." The way they deploy, their philosophies, etc. are COMPLETELY different. I talk about that in this comment a bit here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24790491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24790491 Waypoint is fully open source. There is no risk of it going closed source. If you are alluding to Otto here, Otto's source was never removed either, it is in the Git history of the project that's still on GitHub and we provided a one-click download link on the Otto website when we shut it down. EDIT to add: If you're afraid of us shutting down projects, please note Otto is the only project in our entire history we shut down like that. So we don't (or shouldn't!) have the same reputation around that that Google has. Terraform was effectively failing (no growth) for almost 12 months and we stayed committed to that.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  The concern here is probably more that they become effectively dead without vendor support. While some projects escape that fate they seem to be rare.
  - Already__Taken 6y ago
    As ever but chicken meet egg.
- no_wizard 6y ago
  I imagine that year lag time is what they call lagging indicators. I think with something like terraform it can take some time before it picks up serious steam that stays steady
pitaj 6y ago
Please don't quote text in code blocks. Makes it incredibly difficult for mobile users to read. Reformatted for mobile users: > It was an ambitious project, and we feel that it has not lived up to expectations. Rather than having a public project that does not meet HashiCorp standards, we have decided to close source the project so we can rethink its design and implementation. The source code is still available for download, but Otto will no longer be actively maintained or supported.
- jupp0r 6y ago
  I wish HN had direct support for quotations. It would benefit the discussion culture and solve these formatting problems.
  - amelius 6y ago
    +1 It would also be nice if HN could fix the formatting of code blocks.
syllogism 6y ago
Is there anything else they've discontinued though? Vagrant has waned in popularity given Docker, but it's still supported . Nomad is much less popular than Kubernetes, but it's still being actively developed, with features that make sense for its niche.
- geerlingguy 6y ago
  Sorry, I think my original comment is easy to misinterpret. I'm not saying I'm very worried that will happen, but I am mostly suggesting Hashicorp needs to be very careful post-launch to make sure people know this thing will be more of a Vagrant and less of an Otto :) (And note that Vagrant was _extremely_ popular/'hot' for a time. It's still incredibly useful and widely used, even if it's not a slick new JS-based tool that everyone fawns over these days.) Nobody wants another Google in terms of product support over time!
- mushbino 6y ago
  Nomad is still technically being supported, but looks looks to be low in priority and resources at the moment.
  - armon 6y ago
    We've continued to grow the Nomad team, and are working towards the big 1.0 release milestone later this month. The OSS usage continues to grow double digit every quarter and our commercial offering generates millions in revenue. Nomad is also the backbone of both HashiCorp Cloud Platform and Terraform Cloud. Suffice to say, we continue to support Nomad and depend on it!
    - 14u2c 6y ago
      That's great to hear. I want to thank you for your work on Nomad. Its been a pleasure to use and has allowed us to scale without unnecessary complexity.
    - mushbino 6y ago
      Awesome! I like Nomad a lot, I just know how hot and cold particular spaces can be.
rubiquity 6y ago
When I think back to the era that Otto was released in it was a time of all sorts of vendors feeling the container adrenaline rush that made them think all they needed were containers to replicate the Heroku experience. Otto largely reflects that time in my opinion and a lot has happened in the container and control plane ecosystem since then. I respect HashiCorp's decision to pull the plug on it. (That's coming from someone who works somewhere that takes the complete opposite stance on these things so I'm fully aware of the trade offs.) I've only skimmed the release blog post for Waypoint but from where I'm sitting it seems like a "meta Control Plane" which makes it a wildly different tool compared to Otto.

mitchellh 6y ago

The similarity between Otto and Waypoint are only skin deep: they both use the word "deploy." The way they deploy, their philosophies, etc. are COMPLETELY different. I talk about that in this comment a bit here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24790491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24790491 Waypoint is fully open source. There is no risk of it going closed source. If you are alluding to Otto here, Otto's source was never removed either, it is in the Git history of the project that's still on GitHub and we provided a one-click download link on the Otto website when we shut it down. EDIT to add: If you're afraid of us shutting down projects, please note Otto is the only project in our entire history we shut down like that. So we don't (or shouldn't!) have the same reputation around that that Google has. Terraform was effectively failing (no growth) for almost 12 months and we stayed committed to that.

paulryanrogers 6y ago
The concern here is probably more that they become effectively dead without vendor support. While some projects escape that fate they seem to be rare.
- Already__Taken 6y ago
  As ever but chicken meet egg.
no_wizard 6y ago
I imagine that year lag time is what they call lagging indicators. I think with something like terraform it can take some time before it picks up serious steam that stays steady

pitaj 6y ago

Please don't quote text in code blocks. Makes it incredibly difficult for mobile users to read. Reformatted for mobile users: > It was an ambitious project, and we feel that it has not lived up to expectations. Rather than having a public project that does not meet HashiCorp standards, we have decided to close source the project so we can rethink its design and implementation. The source code is still available for download, but Otto will no longer be actively maintained or supported.

jupp0r 6y ago
I wish HN had direct support for quotations. It would benefit the discussion culture and solve these formatting problems.
- amelius 6y ago
  +1 It would also be nice if HN could fix the formatting of code blocks.

syllogism 6y ago

Is there anything else they've discontinued though? Vagrant has waned in popularity given Docker, but it's still supported . Nomad is much less popular than Kubernetes, but it's still being actively developed, with features that make sense for its niche.

geerlingguy 6y ago
Sorry, I think my original comment is easy to misinterpret. I'm not saying I'm very worried that will happen, but I am mostly suggesting Hashicorp needs to be very careful post-launch to make sure people know this thing will be more of a Vagrant and less of an Otto :) (And note that Vagrant was _extremely_ popular/'hot' for a time. It's still incredibly useful and widely used, even if it's not a slick new JS-based tool that everyone fawns over these days.) Nobody wants another Google in terms of product support over time!
mushbino 6y ago
Nomad is still technically being supported, but looks looks to be low in priority and resources at the moment.
- armon 6y ago
  We've continued to grow the Nomad team, and are working towards the big 1.0 release milestone later this month. The OSS usage continues to grow double digit every quarter and our commercial offering generates millions in revenue. Nomad is also the backbone of both HashiCorp Cloud Platform and Terraform Cloud. Suffice to say, we continue to support Nomad and depend on it!
  - 14u2c 6y ago
    That's great to hear. I want to thank you for your work on Nomad. Its been a pleasure to use and has allowed us to scale without unnecessary complexity.
  - mushbino 6y ago
    Awesome! I like Nomad a lot, I just know how hot and cold particular spaces can be.

rubiquity 6y ago

When I think back to the era that Otto was released in it was a time of all sorts of vendors feeling the container adrenaline rush that made them think all they needed were containers to replicate the Heroku experience. Otto largely reflects that time in my opinion and a lot has happened in the container and control plane ecosystem since then. I respect HashiCorp's decision to pull the plug on it. (That's coming from someone who works somewhere that takes the complete opposite stance on these things so I'm fully aware of the trade offs.) I've only skimmed the release blog post for Waypoint but from where I'm sitting it seems like a "meta Control Plane" which makes it a wildly different tool compared to Otto.