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> I’m not going to run a piece of software that requires 16GB of RAM, has a complex installation script, and is known to be a pain to maintain. This has to be

> I’m not going to run a piece of software that requires 16GB of RAM, has a complex installation script, and is known to be a pain to maintain. This has to be self-hosted eventually either by you or Sentry themselves so the full cost of this is coming down somewhere. The planet is round and all that and there's no getting away from these inefficiencies, but you can kick the proverbial can down the road. Also, they are incentivized to make the open product as hard to use as possible so color me surprised the self-hosted edition is hard to operate.

vanschelven 2y ago
> color me surprised last time a similar thing was pointed out on HN Armin Ronacher (former Sentry) came out and pointed at the following issue: https://github.com/getsentry/team-ospo/issues/232 https://github.com/getsentry/team-ospo/issues/232 but that is now closed with > We are no longer working on this effort for now
- the_mitsuhiko 2y ago
  I no longer work at Sentry but the complexity of operating Sentry is something that we still worked on when I was there. There is no secret incentive to make Sentry hard to operate. You have to consider that engineers run a version of Sentry on their machines too and any complexity ends up there too. One of the biggest pain points of running Sentry is the number of containers and a lot of this comes from how Sentry works with Kafka and Rabbit. That pain point is actively being addressed by moving to a virtualized system [1] though I am not sure how long it will take to actually adopt this. [1]: https://github.com/getsentry/taskbroker/ https://github.com/getsentry/taskbroker/
  - vanschelven 2y ago
    Hi Armin :-) I've seen you make this point on similar posts in the past, and I believe that you believe it. The counterpoint would be that "the purpose of a system is what it does"...
    - detaro 2y ago
      A fairly easy answer is "one of the purposes of Sentry is running Sentry-as-a-service, at large scale". Which comes with compromises that make smaller deployments more "bloated" too, but is a very different thing than intentionally choosing to bloat it to make it hard to run.
      - the_mitsuhiko 2y ago
        It's definitely true that what Sentry is today, is a function of operating it at scale. Thankfully one of the intended purposes of Sentry is also that it scales down much better than today [1]. That it does not is also something that Sentry as a company is not happy with which is why there are desires to change that, which will also benefit self hosted. [1]: this is because a) developing on sentry has become harder and harder on local machines and b) operating single-tenant installations for some customers brings many of the same challenges that people on self-hosted run into. c) we want more regions of Sentry and smaller ones (such as Europe today) have higher fixed costs than ideal.
      - whatnow37373 2y ago
        Yes.. we're getting there. "one of the purposes of Sentry is running Sentry-as-a-service". Why? To make the dwarves happy? It's making money. And with it comes a whole truckload of very obvious incentives. Notice I don't say anyone is intentionally being evil. That's quite unnecessary.
  - manuhabitela 2y ago
    > There is no secret incentive to make Sentry hard to operate It's frustrating when half the comments on a company that dares to open their product is always about how they are obviously intentionally very evil to not do it perfectly/for totally free/with 0 friction/etc. How entitled have we become lol?
    - Tammcynthia 2y ago
      [dead]
    - vanschelven 2y ago
      but in this case the order of events was not "awesome product that was open-sourced as-is later" but "OS product that became harder and harder to install over time"
      - AdrianB1 2y ago
        Products get bigger and more complex over time, so "harder and harder to install, configure and manage" is somewhat normal. The money spent on free or "community" edition is very difficult to justify, so it slowly degrades with time until it becomes unusable and people move on to something else. It is part of the normal lifecycle of software.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    I don't think Sentry is being evil or is trying to make it harder to self host, but I do think that Sentry doesn't have a big incentive to spend a lot of effort making it easier to self host. Again, I don't think that's evil. I think it's entirely reasonable and ok, even if it does make life harder for some people. Maybe this virtualized system will make things easier. If so, that's great. But if it ends up not working out, or if it does, but over the longer term things get more difficult again, I think that's still just kinda how things happen sometimes, and that's ok. One of Sentry's goals is for Sentry themselves to operate it as a hosted cloud service. Architecture decisions made to further that goal can naturally and reasonably be at odds with another goal to make it simpler to self host. Sometimes things can't be one-size-fits-all.
    - the_mitsuhiko 2y ago
      I already mentioned this elsewhere here but Sentry does have an incentive to improve this. That’s because the complexity creates challenges in the operation of smaller instances and during development.
whstl 2y ago
> This has to be self-hosted eventually either by you or Sentry themselves Not really. There are alternatives. Which seems to be the point of the article.
- whatnow37373 2y ago
  You mean like having a different product internally, super optimized etc? Or what do you mean?
  - whstl 2y ago
    The post itself is advocating for an alternative, so nobody really has to rely on or run Sentry.
    - whatnow37373 2y ago
      Ah, I see. I meant that when using Sentry someone will have to host it. Not that we can't live our lives without it.
      - kelnos 2y ago
        Sure, but "when using Sentry" is an artificial constraint. There's no reason to constrain yourself that way when there are alternatives that might be sufficient for your needs, that don't require a beefy machine and a lot of maintenance effort when self-hosting.

vanschelven 2y ago

> color me surprised last time a similar thing was pointed out on HN Armin Ronacher (former Sentry) came out and pointed at the following issue: https://github.com/getsentry/team-ospo/issues/232 https://github.com/getsentry/team-ospo/issues/232 but that is now closed with > We are no longer working on this effort for now

the_mitsuhiko 2y ago
I no longer work at Sentry but the complexity of operating Sentry is something that we still worked on when I was there. There is no secret incentive to make Sentry hard to operate. You have to consider that engineers run a version of Sentry on their machines too and any complexity ends up there too. One of the biggest pain points of running Sentry is the number of containers and a lot of this comes from how Sentry works with Kafka and Rabbit. That pain point is actively being addressed by moving to a virtualized system [1] though I am not sure how long it will take to actually adopt this. [1]: https://github.com/getsentry/taskbroker/ https://github.com/getsentry/taskbroker/
- vanschelven 2y ago
  Hi Armin :-) I've seen you make this point on similar posts in the past, and I believe that you believe it. The counterpoint would be that "the purpose of a system is what it does"...
  - detaro 2y ago
    A fairly easy answer is "one of the purposes of Sentry is running Sentry-as-a-service, at large scale". Which comes with compromises that make smaller deployments more "bloated" too, but is a very different thing than intentionally choosing to bloat it to make it hard to run.
    - the_mitsuhiko 2y ago
      It's definitely true that what Sentry is today, is a function of operating it at scale. Thankfully one of the intended purposes of Sentry is also that it scales down much better than today [1]. That it does not is also something that Sentry as a company is not happy with which is why there are desires to change that, which will also benefit self hosted. [1]: this is because a) developing on sentry has become harder and harder on local machines and b) operating single-tenant installations for some customers brings many of the same challenges that people on self-hosted run into. c) we want more regions of Sentry and smaller ones (such as Europe today) have higher fixed costs than ideal.
    - whatnow37373 2y ago
      Yes.. we're getting there. "one of the purposes of Sentry is running Sentry-as-a-service". Why? To make the dwarves happy? It's making money. And with it comes a whole truckload of very obvious incentives. Notice I don't say anyone is intentionally being evil. That's quite unnecessary.
- manuhabitela 2y ago
  > There is no secret incentive to make Sentry hard to operate It's frustrating when half the comments on a company that dares to open their product is always about how they are obviously intentionally very evil to not do it perfectly/for totally free/with 0 friction/etc. How entitled have we become lol?
  - Tammcynthia 2y ago
    [dead]
  - vanschelven 2y ago
    but in this case the order of events was not "awesome product that was open-sourced as-is later" but "OS product that became harder and harder to install over time"
    - AdrianB1 2y ago
      Products get bigger and more complex over time, so "harder and harder to install, configure and manage" is somewhat normal. The money spent on free or "community" edition is very difficult to justify, so it slowly degrades with time until it becomes unusable and people move on to something else. It is part of the normal lifecycle of software.
- kelnos 2y ago
  I don't think Sentry is being evil or is trying to make it harder to self host, but I do think that Sentry doesn't have a big incentive to spend a lot of effort making it easier to self host. Again, I don't think that's evil. I think it's entirely reasonable and ok, even if it does make life harder for some people. Maybe this virtualized system will make things easier. If so, that's great. But if it ends up not working out, or if it does, but over the longer term things get more difficult again, I think that's still just kinda how things happen sometimes, and that's ok. One of Sentry's goals is for Sentry themselves to operate it as a hosted cloud service. Architecture decisions made to further that goal can naturally and reasonably be at odds with another goal to make it simpler to self host. Sometimes things can't be one-size-fits-all.
  - the_mitsuhiko 2y ago
    I already mentioned this elsewhere here but Sentry does have an incentive to improve this. That’s because the complexity creates challenges in the operation of smaller instances and during development.

whstl 2y ago

> This has to be self-hosted eventually either by you or Sentry themselves Not really. There are alternatives. Which seems to be the point of the article.

whatnow37373 2y ago
You mean like having a different product internally, super optimized etc? Or what do you mean?
- whstl 2y ago
  The post itself is advocating for an alternative, so nobody really has to rely on or run Sentry.
  - whatnow37373 2y ago
    Ah, I see. I meant that when using Sentry someone will have to host it. Not that we can't live our lives without it.
    - kelnos 2y ago
      Sure, but "when using Sentry" is an artificial constraint. There's no reason to constrain yourself that way when there are alternatives that might be sufficient for your needs, that don't require a beefy machine and a lot of maintenance effort when self-hosting.