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> What will fly.io do? Probably what everyone else does, starts simple, becomes popular and then caves No, mrkurt will not cave, I can guarantee you that. Fly

> What will fly.io do? Probably what everyone else does, starts simple, becomes popular and then caves No, mrkurt will not cave, I can guarantee you that. Fly will be a platform that says no to feature requests that don't make sense for their customer base. I have no affiliation with Fly, other than I've used it on and off since the beginning of the platform's existence. They're a veteran team that knows how to build platforms. I definitely trust them to go in the right direction with their roadmap, and all my new projects go on Fly.

pier25 4y ago
> No, mrkurt will not cave, I can guarantee you that. I concur. Fly is not your typical startup with dreams of becoming the next big corp monster. They are just a bunch of talented people with a vision having fun making cool stuff.
- capableweb 4y ago
  Not to break your rose-tinted glasses, I think fly.io is pretty cool too. But it's a for-profit company with outside investment, coming from investors who expect a return on their investment, one way or another, and they likely have some influence on how the company will act. Same has been said for every company who taken outside investment ever. "But no, Heroku/Figma/GitHub/X are different, they really do care about their users and would never sell/go public/Y", and then a couple of years later we end up in the same position. It might not even be up to the "bunch of talented people" in the end, what they have to do to survive or to grow. But grow they have to, unless investors are fine with getting their ROI over 10-50 years rather than 1-10 years. A growing usually comes with some pain.
  - mrkurt 4y ago
    This is a 10-50 year company. You're not wrong, though, we are either building something big or we're building something that will fail. Our bet is that a developer first public cloud is important and needs to exist. Which means, there will be one of three outcomes: 1. We are correct, and manage to build the right thing. We'll get to work on this forever. 2. We are correct, but not the right group to build it. We fail. 3. We are incorrect, and the world doesn't need a public cloud for devs. We fail, and I become a carpenter. We have the same incentives as our investors. That doesn't mean it'll work. It does mean that we all believe that we're building a product for developers. We're pretty good at surviving, so far. And there are early signs that we're good at growing. There's reason to be hopeful. :)
    - KrishnaShripad 4y ago
      Only issue stopping me from using Fly: bandwidth costs. I am spoiled by DigitalOcean's 1TB tier per droplet created (along with bandwidth pooling if you have more droplets).
      - gsanderson 4y ago
        That's true but Fly's PaaS is perhaps more comparable to DigitalOcean's App Platform (its PaaS). For that, DO include 100GB for free while Fly include 160GB. Beyond that, DO charge $0.10/GB while Fly charge $0.02-$0.12/GB. Cheaper bandwidth for Fly's Machines (more comparable to droplets, as far as I can see) would be neat though.
        KrishnaShripad 4y ago
        Yes I agree that Fly's PaaS is more comparable to DO's App Platform and definitely has better price model. However, I don't use DO's App Platform for exactly the same reasons as why I don't use Fly's PaaS. I like services which provide bandwidth for cheap (or even free — Cloudflare Images and Cloudflare R2 comes to mind). Ideally, I want to be charged only for features I use and not for egress which I have no control over. But I know that is not feasible from business point of view (unless you are Cloudflare).
        tptacek 4y ago
        It's OK that we're not a good fit for every user; in fact, you should be suspicious of providers that claim otherwise.
    - morelisp 4y ago
      I adore fly.io and hope for 1), but > We have the same incentives as our investors. this is wrong, even if today it looks right because the different incentives result in the same concrete things. You have a company; your goal is to make the company succeed. Investors have a portfolio; their goal is to make the portfolio succeed. Your company succeeding is only one aspect of their portfolio succeeding, and one whose importance and externalities can change drastically for reasons outside your control.
Dma54rhs 4y ago
Have other people invested money in them? If that's the case, sooner or later they don't call the shots, but rather who owns the capital and wants it to grow.
- mrkurt 4y ago
  I think if you look at the companies you like, you'll notice that it's not the investors who call the shots. There are a handful of very large, very profitable, developer focused companies that investors love because they remain developer focused. There are also companies that never figured it out because "developer focused" is not the right business model for them. Those are, I think, the companies that make us all feel burned. Heroku is one of those companies where "developer focus" is not the right business model. Salesforce has a model, it's working very well, Heroku's doesn't fit.
Thaxll 4y ago
You should look at the Multi-region PostgreSQL feature they did, not their best work imo. https://fly.io/docs/getting-started/multi-region-databases/ https://fly.io/docs/getting-started/multi-region-databases/
- mrkurt 4y ago
  Hey! I love this feature. What don't you like?
- simonw 4y ago
  That fly-replay header is legit one of the smartest pieces of infrastructure engineering designs I've encountered in years.
- xmonkee 4y ago
  I was thinking about adopting this feature in the near future. Would love to know your reservations against it.

pier25 4y ago

> No, mrkurt will not cave, I can guarantee you that. I concur. Fly is not your typical startup with dreams of becoming the next big corp monster. They are just a bunch of talented people with a vision having fun making cool stuff.

capableweb 4y ago
Not to break your rose-tinted glasses, I think fly.io is pretty cool too. But it's a for-profit company with outside investment, coming from investors who expect a return on their investment, one way or another, and they likely have some influence on how the company will act. Same has been said for every company who taken outside investment ever. "But no, Heroku/Figma/GitHub/X are different, they really do care about their users and would never sell/go public/Y", and then a couple of years later we end up in the same position. It might not even be up to the "bunch of talented people" in the end, what they have to do to survive or to grow. But grow they have to, unless investors are fine with getting their ROI over 10-50 years rather than 1-10 years. A growing usually comes with some pain.
- mrkurt 4y ago
  This is a 10-50 year company. You're not wrong, though, we are either building something big or we're building something that will fail. Our bet is that a developer first public cloud is important and needs to exist. Which means, there will be one of three outcomes: 1. We are correct, and manage to build the right thing. We'll get to work on this forever. 2. We are correct, but not the right group to build it. We fail. 3. We are incorrect, and the world doesn't need a public cloud for devs. We fail, and I become a carpenter. We have the same incentives as our investors. That doesn't mean it'll work. It does mean that we all believe that we're building a product for developers. We're pretty good at surviving, so far. And there are early signs that we're good at growing. There's reason to be hopeful. :)
  - KrishnaShripad 4y ago
    Only issue stopping me from using Fly: bandwidth costs. I am spoiled by DigitalOcean's 1TB tier per droplet created (along with bandwidth pooling if you have more droplets).
    - gsanderson 4y ago
      That's true but Fly's PaaS is perhaps more comparable to DigitalOcean's App Platform (its PaaS). For that, DO include 100GB for free while Fly include 160GB. Beyond that, DO charge $0.10/GB while Fly charge $0.02-$0.12/GB. Cheaper bandwidth for Fly's Machines (more comparable to droplets, as far as I can see) would be neat though.
      - KrishnaShripad 4y ago
        Yes I agree that Fly's PaaS is more comparable to DO's App Platform and definitely has better price model. However, I don't use DO's App Platform for exactly the same reasons as why I don't use Fly's PaaS. I like services which provide bandwidth for cheap (or even free — Cloudflare Images and Cloudflare R2 comes to mind). Ideally, I want to be charged only for features I use and not for egress which I have no control over. But I know that is not feasible from business point of view (unless you are Cloudflare).
        tptacek 4y ago
        It's OK that we're not a good fit for every user; in fact, you should be suspicious of providers that claim otherwise.
  - morelisp 4y ago
    I adore fly.io and hope for 1), but > We have the same incentives as our investors. this is wrong, even if today it looks right because the different incentives result in the same concrete things. You have a company; your goal is to make the company succeed. Investors have a portfolio; their goal is to make the portfolio succeed. Your company succeeding is only one aspect of their portfolio succeeding, and one whose importance and externalities can change drastically for reasons outside your control.

Dma54rhs 4y ago

Have other people invested money in them? If that's the case, sooner or later they don't call the shots, but rather who owns the capital and wants it to grow.

mrkurt 4y ago
I think if you look at the companies you like, you'll notice that it's not the investors who call the shots. There are a handful of very large, very profitable, developer focused companies that investors love because they remain developer focused. There are also companies that never figured it out because "developer focused" is not the right business model for them. Those are, I think, the companies that make us all feel burned. Heroku is one of those companies where "developer focus" is not the right business model. Salesforce has a model, it's working very well, Heroku's doesn't fit.

Thaxll 4y ago

You should look at the Multi-region PostgreSQL feature they did, not their best work imo. https://fly.io/docs/getting-started/multi-region-databases/ https://fly.io/docs/getting-started/multi-region-databases/

mrkurt 4y ago
Hey! I love this feature. What don't you like?
simonw 4y ago
That fly-replay header is legit one of the smartest pieces of infrastructure engineering designs I've encountered in years.
xmonkee 4y ago
I was thinking about adopting this feature in the near future. Would love to know your reservations against it.