Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AltTab is introducing a Pro version and staying open source

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 21 posts

Re: AltTab is introducing a Pro version and staying open source

#2

Post by threecheese »

This isn’t the controversy the title suggests. Taking the dev at their word, the measures are pretty reasonable; they asked for help maintaining, nobody stepped up, and so it needs funding somehow. You only need a license to access a release binary, and a paid license to access the Pro binary. Source code is open, compile it yourself to avoid. Some features went into the Paid tier: well, something had to. Commenters are mostly supportive.

The dev did yank the previous releases, which wasn’t maybe the wrong choice.

Re: AltTab is introducing a Pro version and staying open source

#4

Post by rdmuser »

threecheese wrote: post #2

This isn’t the controversy the title suggests. Taking the dev at their word, the measures are pretty reasonable; they asked for help maintaining, nobody stepped up, and so it needs funding somehow. You only need a license to access a release binary, and a paid license to access the Pro binary. Source code is open, compile it yourself to avoid. Some features went into the Paid tier: well, something had to. Commenters…

The dev even offers free pro licenses to those who can't afford them:

"I shall add that if for some unfortunate reason you're not able to afford a license, just email me and i shall offer you one"

Re: AltTab is introducing a Pro version and staying open source

#8

Post by MarsIronPI »

threecheese wrote: post #2

This isn’t the controversy the title suggests. Taking the dev at their word, the measures are pretty reasonable; they asked for help maintaining, nobody stepped up, and so it needs funding somehow. You only need a license to access a release binary, and a paid license to access the Pro binary. Source code is open, compile it yourself to avoid. Some features went into the Paid tier: well, something had to. Commenters…

Agreed. I was about to get up in arms about license violations and rugpulls, but this is neither. The code is still free and open source, just the builds are up for sale. This is literally a business model encouraged by the FSF. I hope the paid tier is successful and we see more projects adopt this approach when the time comes to pay the bills.
Post reply on HN