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We built the fastest CI and it failed

earthly.dev

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Re: We built the fastest CI and it failed

#111

Post by staunton »

gabereiser wrote: post #99
dpeckett wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure feature withholding has traditionally worked out well in the developer space. The churn rate for tooling is so high that if Earthly were to intentionally cripple their product I'm sure the majority of developers would just move on to other inferior, but free, options (eg. taskfile). Maybe those that remain could be converted successfully but it's quite a gamble. A great turn around story in recent times…

Yeah, not suggesting feature withholding per se, but a differentiator on why one would buy vs run the OSS build.

What's the difference?

Re: We built the fastest CI and it failed

#113

Post by mcnichol »

CodeL wrote: post #100

Innovation isn't just about speed; it's about understanding the nuances of user needs and market dynamics. Even the fastest CI can face hurdles if it doesn't align with the broader ecosystem's expectations and requirements.

This right here.

I have found some of the greatest products I have used came from:

"I'm working on this project, the tools I currently have are just different forms of a hammer...I need a screwdriver. I built a screwdriver. This screwdriver is the only tool I'll consider when I face this situation."

The tools sell because the people doing the work and feeling the pain react strongly while pointing at the incompetent layers above with purchasing power. Giving (or showing) someone the solution and then taking it away is probably the most common reason I have seen someone leave a situation.

Re: We built the fastest CI and it failed

#114

Post by gabereiser »

staunton wrote: post #111
gabereiser wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, not suggesting feature withholding per se, but a differentiator on why one would buy vs run the OSS build.

What's the difference?

plugins, hardware, hosting, support, there's a number of ways to offer a service for an open source project. Open Core models come to mind. Another is not having enterprise SSO as part of the core. Or not having clustering. Something that would make a VP think twice about adopting your open source solution vs using you as a vendor.

Re: We built the fastest CI and it failed

#115

Post by shandor »

isoprophlex wrote: post #94
reactordev wrote: post #56

This is a good write up of why you shouldn’t give away the house when you open source things. The issue was really this: Earthly being open-source, Earthy Satellite users were already seeing the benefit from 95% of Earthly CI . I’m a huge fan of open source, however, if your business model includes an open source model - you need a differentiator. Beyond blazingly fast(tm). You need a reason for people to offer up th…

> Azure DevOps is the devil. Amen to that!

Is there an actual technical point beyond ”MS bad” for this sentiment?

Honestly asking, as I’ve been mostly hearing positive things about AzDO, and from developers of all people.

Re: We built the fastest CI and it failed

#117

Post by gabereiser »

AaronM wrote: post #107
reactordev wrote: post #56

This is a good write up of why you shouldn’t give away the house when you open source things. The issue was really this: Earthly being open-source, Earthy Satellite users were already seeing the benefit from 95% of Earthly CI . I’m a huge fan of open source, however, if your business model includes an open source model - you need a differentiator. Beyond blazingly fast(tm). You need a reason for people to offer up th…

Did you mean argowf instead of argocd? Argocd is pretty simple and only syncs k8 resources.

I mean that node (not js) dashboard to build pipelines and make things look logical instead of writing 4 lines of bash. I'm not a fan of anything that adds complexity. ArgoCD/WF/ALL ARGO... is just a pretty dashboard over cli tooling.

   ./deploy.sh @
This is the contract you should focus on. Whatever you need to make ./deploy.sh do this, do it.

Re: We built the fastest CI and it failed

#118

Post by imiric »

dpeckett wrote: post #86
reactordev wrote: post #56

This is a good write up of why you shouldn’t give away the house when you open source things. The issue was really this: Earthly being open-source, Earthy Satellite users were already seeing the benefit from 95% of Earthly CI . I’m a huge fan of open source, however, if your business model includes an open source model - you need a differentiator. Beyond blazingly fast(tm). You need a reason for people to offer up th…

I'm not sure feature withholding has traditionally worked out well in the developer space. The churn rate for tooling is so high that if Earthly were to intentionally cripple their product I'm sure the majority of developers would just move on to other inferior, but free, options (eg. taskfile). Maybe those that remain could be converted successfully but it's quite a gamble. A great turn around story in recent times…

For the open core model to work, the OSS product should be standalone and featureful. If users feel like it's just used to advertise a commercial product, it doesn't work. And the commercial product should offer value-added services and features that are not strictly required for the base OSS product. These should be features directed towards advanced or corporate users, and preferably something that competitors lack, or don't do a good job of.

It's very tricky to balance the open core model correctly, which is why not many companies get it right. You need to invest equally, if not more, in the OSS product, and make sure users are happy with it before you even mention a commercial addon. Grafana is another example of companies that understand and do this well.

Re: We built the fastest CI and it failed

#119

Post by datadrivenangel »

shandor wrote: post #115
isoprophlex wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Azure DevOps is the devil. Amen to that!

Is there an actual technical point beyond ”MS bad” for this sentiment? Honestly asking, as I’ve been mostly hearing positive things about AzDO, and from developers of all people.

ADO makes me yearn for Jira.

The boards are terrible, the UI is hard, the permissions are incomprehensible, it doesn't even integrate that nicely with Azure.

On paper it does everything, it practice it can be made to do everything, but it's like getting citrus drenched sandpaper papercuts every day.

Re: We built the fastest CI and it failed

#120

Post by 12_throw_away »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #88

I've used Earthly for a year and absolutely love it. It allows you to have two dependencies on the host system for any project -- just Docker and Earthly. I've used it to build cross-compilers, system software, web apps, my resume, school projects. The speed up is real. You can definitely get caching and parallelization and containizeration with other build systems, but Earthly's value is that it comes for free with…

Ditto, it's been a huge success where I work. Keeping my fingers crossed that they find a way to stay in business :)
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