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> That’s why I recently switched it from AGPL to Apache: I want everyone to use Herdr freely, without any problem. I'm curious what the actual problems with AG

> That’s why I recently switched it from AGPL to Apache: I want everyone to use Herdr freely, without any problem. I'm curious what the actual problems with AGPL were.

rajangdavis 2mo ago
Can't make money if people use your tool and are required to share their source code
- spudlyo 2mo ago
  Radix enim omnium malorum est cupiditas. Enshitification is sure to follow in one guise or another.
  - rajangdavis 2mo ago
    I don’t know that this qualifies as enshitification… on one hand, the author created something that scratched his own itch, shared it, and now it’s become a tool that he wishes to steward into a way where he can make money. I don’t know that these are terrible things inherently, it kind of depends if he wishes to extract as money as possible from his users by any means necessary or if he’s truly trying to scale it so it can help people. All we have is this article and infinite speculation. I personally didn’t find herdr useful, so I have no stake in the direction of what the author decides to do with herdr.
    - spudlyo 2mo ago
      In my cynical view, herder now seems to be an attempt to commercialize tmux by adding superficial polish. I am wary of VC backed developer tools that seek to innovate in well established open source niches. Herdr by default is mouse focused, has very friendly UI interactions, and has some niche UI support for agents running in panes. Great. Now it also has a profit motive and ROI pressures. I don't see this ending well.
    - inigyou 2mo ago
      If he wants to make money he needs to sell licenses, not give them away for free. To that end, making the free version AGPL is generally a good move. It ensures people can get hooked on your product and when they start working at corporations they have to pay to keep using it.
    - yoyohello13 2mo ago
      Enshitification is 100% guaranteed with any vc backing. Maybe not now, but definitely in the future it is the literal point of venture capital. Gain adoption, then exploit to the maximum extent possible. It’s fine to use these kind of tools, just don’t get too attached and be ready for the rug pull.
- 6P58r3MXJSLi 2mo ago
  You can totally make money if people use your tool It's companies using your tool that don't want to give back to the people
koiueo 2mo ago
No money from investors
tyre 2mo ago
The copyleft licenses are toxic for adoption. Companies default away from them because there are a lot of murky unknowns (e.g. if you run a copyleft service and connect to it via API, is that extending it? Does that service’s source have to be shared?) that simply aren’t worth the hassle. If you want your library to get traction with many real world use cases, you need to have a permissive license. If you want to stick to the principles, you’re going to sacrifice adoption. Not saying one is better than the other, but there’s a tradeoff.
- guywithahat 2mo ago
  I'm not sure why you're being downvoted, you're right. Using software that has requires people to contribute back is a huge liability, and hurts adoption, which is the most important metric for herdr right now.
  - toomuchtodo 2mo ago
    Seems like the path is to use LLMs to launder code from VC funded efforts and their public codebases into codebases with a copyleft license. Otherwise you have to wait for the rug pull before taking action (Terraform and Vault->OpenTofu and OpenBao). It is fair use to train and create derivative works after all, as courts have ruled so far.
    - inigyou 2mo ago
      You can just take someone else's permissively licensed code and relicense it AGPL, or even proprietary if you want to. Corporations want it proprietary but the same trick works for copyleft. For bonus points make sure your fork has better SEO than the original, so when someone who heard it's permissive embeds it in a proprietary product, you can sue them.
      - toomuchtodo 2mo ago
        Was assuming worse case scenario from a licensing compatibility and copyright perspective.
inigyou 2mo ago
[flagged]
- gilthelander 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - Barrin92 2mo ago
    >Do YC CEO's dress in all white like Boss Hogg? No, of course not, they're your friends. They even have a ping pong table and a smoothie bar. It's like in the Soviet Union, everyone's a comrade, nobody's a boss https://youtu.be/fQlJE7ABNu4 https://youtu.be/fQlJE7ABNu4
  - jbmchuck 2mo ago
    Here you go: https://forklog.com/en/former-coinbase-employee-accused-of-code-theft-for-ai-project/ https://forklog.com/en/former-coinbase-employee-accused-of-c... https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/26/corgi-the-buzzy-y-combinator-backed-insurance-tech-startup-says-it-didnt-steal-an-open-source-product/ https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/26/corgi-the-buzzy-y-combinat...
gilthelander 2mo ago
[flagged]
yoyohello13 2mo ago
FUD, can’t take investment when your project actually enforces user freedom.

> That’s why I recently switched it from AGPL to Apache: I want everyone to use Herdr freely, without any problem. I'm curious what the actual problems with AGPL were.

rajangdavis 2mo ago

Can't make money if people use your tool and are required to share their source code

spudlyo 2mo ago
Radix enim omnium malorum est cupiditas. Enshitification is sure to follow in one guise or another.
- rajangdavis 2mo ago
  I don’t know that this qualifies as enshitification… on one hand, the author created something that scratched his own itch, shared it, and now it’s become a tool that he wishes to steward into a way where he can make money. I don’t know that these are terrible things inherently, it kind of depends if he wishes to extract as money as possible from his users by any means necessary or if he’s truly trying to scale it so it can help people. All we have is this article and infinite speculation. I personally didn’t find herdr useful, so I have no stake in the direction of what the author decides to do with herdr.
  - spudlyo 2mo ago
    In my cynical view, herder now seems to be an attempt to commercialize tmux by adding superficial polish. I am wary of VC backed developer tools that seek to innovate in well established open source niches. Herdr by default is mouse focused, has very friendly UI interactions, and has some niche UI support for agents running in panes. Great. Now it also has a profit motive and ROI pressures. I don't see this ending well.
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    If he wants to make money he needs to sell licenses, not give them away for free. To that end, making the free version AGPL is generally a good move. It ensures people can get hooked on your product and when they start working at corporations they have to pay to keep using it.
  - yoyohello13 2mo ago
    Enshitification is 100% guaranteed with any vc backing. Maybe not now, but definitely in the future it is the literal point of venture capital. Gain adoption, then exploit to the maximum extent possible. It’s fine to use these kind of tools, just don’t get too attached and be ready for the rug pull.
6P58r3MXJSLi 2mo ago
You can totally make money if people use your tool It's companies using your tool that don't want to give back to the people

koiueo 2mo ago

No money from investors

tyre 2mo ago

The copyleft licenses are toxic for adoption. Companies default away from them because there are a lot of murky unknowns (e.g. if you run a copyleft service and connect to it via API, is that extending it? Does that service’s source have to be shared?) that simply aren’t worth the hassle. If you want your library to get traction with many real world use cases, you need to have a permissive license. If you want to stick to the principles, you’re going to sacrifice adoption. Not saying one is better than the other, but there’s a tradeoff.

guywithahat 2mo ago
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted, you're right. Using software that has requires people to contribute back is a huge liability, and hurts adoption, which is the most important metric for herdr right now.
- toomuchtodo 2mo ago
  Seems like the path is to use LLMs to launder code from VC funded efforts and their public codebases into codebases with a copyleft license. Otherwise you have to wait for the rug pull before taking action (Terraform and Vault->OpenTofu and OpenBao). It is fair use to train and create derivative works after all, as courts have ruled so far.
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    You can just take someone else's permissively licensed code and relicense it AGPL, or even proprietary if you want to. Corporations want it proprietary but the same trick works for copyleft. For bonus points make sure your fork has better SEO than the original, so when someone who heard it's permissive embeds it in a proprietary product, you can sue them.
    - toomuchtodo 2mo ago
      Was assuming worse case scenario from a licensing compatibility and copyright perspective.

inigyou 2mo ago

[flagged]

gilthelander 2mo ago
[flagged]
- Barrin92 2mo ago
  >Do YC CEO's dress in all white like Boss Hogg? No, of course not, they're your friends. They even have a ping pong table and a smoothie bar. It's like in the Soviet Union, everyone's a comrade, nobody's a boss https://youtu.be/fQlJE7ABNu4 https://youtu.be/fQlJE7ABNu4
- jbmchuck 2mo ago
  Here you go: https://forklog.com/en/former-coinbase-employee-accused-of-code-theft-for-ai-project/ https://forklog.com/en/former-coinbase-employee-accused-of-c... https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/26/corgi-the-buzzy-y-combinator-backed-insurance-tech-startup-says-it-didnt-steal-an-open-source-product/ https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/26/corgi-the-buzzy-y-combinat...

gilthelander 2mo ago

[flagged]

yoyohello13 2mo ago

FUD, can’t take investment when your project actually enforces user freedom.