"It is not like $299 is much for me, but I am just a hobbist."
They kind of have a point but everything around it is ridiculous.
We all know they are evil. But you know the most evil thing? That code that was previously released under a free license? Still sneakily on display in the git history like the crown jewels in the Tower of London. Except of armed guard defending the code that wants to be free once more it's hidden behind arcane git commands. Name me a single person that knows how to navigate the git history. I'm waiting. Spoiler alert: I asked Claude and they don't exist.
2. Click on the commit ID
3. You’ll see something like “1 parent: fdsfgsd” – click through to that commit
4. Browse
I mean, it’s a shitty move for sure, but eh.
And your rebuttal is, "Well you can always recover the code from the git history?"
I mean, this is true, but do you think this really addresses the spirit of the post's complaint? Does mentioning they're a non-profit change anything about the complaint?
The leadership and future of a software project is an important component in its use professionally. If someone believes that the project's leadership is acting in an unfair or unpredictable way then it's rational and prudent for them to first express displeasure, then disassociate with the project if they continue this course. But you've decided to write a post that suggests the poster is being irrational, unfair, and that they want the project to fail when clearly they don't.
If you'd like to critique the post's points, I suggest you do so rather than straw manning and well-poisoning. This post may look good to friends of the project, but to me as someone with only a passing familiarity with what's going on? It looks awful.
[edit: Seems like the model with an open core and some closed plugins could work out fine. If not, everyone's got options. Wishing success for both the D* developers and the users.]
Indeed! Could you do us all a favour and fork the pre-pro plugins and make them compatible with the current iteration of d* pro? They're all like 50 LOC, after all, so should be simple.
Yet, surely, this could just be toggled with an env var or db setting or something? if dev, include pro and inspector component. If prod, use free version (or custom bundle that only has what you need)
> It was a full rewrite. Use the beta release forever if it has all the tools you need. No one is stopping you.
> Open source doesn't owe you anything and I expect the same back.
You know who else does that? THE DEVELOPER OF HTMX! https://htmx.org/essays/alternatives/
> Some pretty classy comments from them on reddit too:
What is unclassy about those comments? Seem sensible to me...
Something about riding the hype train for a fully open and free library you did not create to push your product just feels strange to me.
-> that was pretty freaking cool to read, loved it
also chuckled at the idea of my website making, health professional going all "What the fuck." in front of his codebase.
But I'm now here to defend Datastar.
It's their code, which, up to now, they built and literally given away totally for free, under a MIT license. Everything (even what "they moved to the Pro tier") should still be free and under the MIT license that it was published under originally.
You just decided to rely and freeload (as, as far as I can tell, you never contributed to the project).
You decided to rely on a random third party that owns the framework. And now you're outraged because they've decided that from now on, future work will be paid.
You know the three magic words:
Just. Fork. It.
The rest is plugins, which anyone can write or modify. There's no need for the plugins to get merged upstream - just use them in your project, and share them publicly if you want. You could even do the same with the pre-pro versions of the pro plugins - just make the (likely minor) modifications to make them compatible with the current datastar core.
They're also going to be releasing a formal public plugin api in the next release. Presumably it'll be even easier to do all of this then.
This is nonsensical. Someone did something for free. Fantastic. They used it, successfully, for a production system that enables scheduling for their job.
Nobody took that away from them. They didn't force them to rebuild their tool.
The code is even there, in the git history, available for them.
If OP doesn't like what the devs decided to do with the project, just move on or fork and pay someone to help you fix any outstanding bugs or missing features.
The software was released as a free version, with NO expectation for it to go commercial.
The fact that they switch to a paid version, and stripping out features from the original free version, is called "bait and switch".
If OP knew in advanced, he will have been informed about this and the potential 299 price tag. And he will have been able to make a informed decision BEFORE integrating the code.
> You just decided to rely and freeload (as, as far as I can tell, you never contributed to the project).
But you complaint about him being a freeloader for not contributing to a project. What a ridiculous response.
I feel like you never even read the post and are making assumption that OP is a full time programmer.
Datastar can do whatever they want, its their code. But calling out a *bait and switch* does not make OP the bad guy.
I did read the post. I know OP not a programmer. And that makes it even worse: OP has the audacity of saying they "make no money from the project" while it being a scheduling tool for their presumably plenty money-making clinic.
It would in fact be less shocking if they were a programmer doing a side project for fun.
This piece is not a rational, well tempered article. Is a rant by someone who just took something that was free and is now outraged and saying fuck you to those who made their project possible in the first place, not even understanding how licenses work or even being aware that the code they relied on is still there, on github, fully intact, and available for them.
This sort of people not only want to get it for free. They want their code to be maintained and improved for free in perpetuity.
They deserve to be called freeloaders.
The “outrage” is literally just people saying they’ll use a different project instead. Why would they ever fork it? They don’t like the devs of datastar they don’t want to use it going forwards. Yes the developers are allowed to do what they want with their code and time, but people are allowed to vote with their feet and go elsewhere and they are allowed to be vocal about it.
There is a saying in my language which translates: give someone a hand and they'll take your whole arm.
Anyone have a link for this?
I am confused.
Nothing wrong with people making money on their software but you need to make it clear from the start, that it will be paid software and what price range.
Bait and switch is often used to get people to use your software, you spend time into it, and then if you need a Pro feature, well, fork up or rework your code again. So your paying with your time or money. This is why its nasty and gets people riled up.
Its amazing how many people are defending this behavior.
Is the problem thar one needs to fork / maintain the code from now on? Is the problem that one wants free support on top of the free library?
Bait & Switch. They're in their right to do it, but it's a bad move, and nobody should use their project^M^M^M^Mduct anymore.
I like the communal aspect of open source, but I don’t like overly demanding and entitled free loaders. I’ve had enough of that in my well paid career over the last decade.
This way of getting paid may or may not resonate, but I applaud the attempt to make it work.
The replace-url thing should be a simple JS code using history API no?
[1] https://github.com/sudeep9/datastar-plugins?tab=readme-ov-fi...
andersmurphy•2h ago
I payed the one off 299$ for a pro license but have yet to find a reason to use any of the pro features.
I was hoping to need them for the google sheets clone [1] I was building but I seem to be able to do it without PRO features.
- [1] https://cells.andersmurphy.com/
sgt•2h ago
Tepix•2h ago
aquariusDue•1h ago
As was said by the commenter in another reply, the inspector is actually the bit that makes the Pro version much more appealing but most people wouldn't know from the sidelines.
nchmy•2h ago
I thought the devs' emphatic assertions in their Discord NOT to buy Datastar Pro was a psyop dark pattern. I bought it to spite them, and barely use any of it. I want my css-in-js back!
sudodevnull•1h ago
infecto•1h ago
andersmurphy•1h ago