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

The End of Eleventy

brennan.day

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 195 posts

Re: The End of Eleventy

#131

Post by red_admiral »

pjmlp wrote: post #92
trinix912 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is true, but nowadays most paid projects end up being perpetual subscriptions. Which I kind of get, as on-going maintenance still costs, but it used to be that you paid for a tool once and only paid again if you wanted/needed an updated version. I'd gladly pay $15-$60 for a tool once (and again if I needed an update) but $10-$15 per month for 20 different things (that I will only use occasionally) is just out of…

How do you imagine it used to be when everything was commercial? On the plus side, at least there wasn't that many magpie development, and rewrites just because. Subscriptions are the only way to fix piracy.

Programs were distributed on stacks of diskettes, towards the end of that era on CD-ROMs. There was no licence server to phone home to on the internet.

You bought Borland C++ compiler, installed it and used it - you were free to buy the next version when it came out or not.

Re: The End of Eleventy

#132

Post by bjackman »

charles_f wrote: post #18

I've been using the same version of Jekyll, using the same outdated, discontinued version of ruby, for more than 10y. I refuse to learn anything about ruby, or spend any time upgrading Jekyll or any of the 2 plug-ins I use, and I take a weird pride in that. It works, it generates my blog, I don't want it to do anything else. I have no idea how it works anymore. For all I know Jekyll has been abandoned. That version o…

Ha, I had a similar story with Jekyll but my build wasn't containerised. At some point it stopped being compatible with the latest [something. Ruby? Gems? I don't care, just build my fucking HTML templates please] so I just migrated to Hugo.

I stuck around on Hugo for quite some time and I've never had any such issues yet, but now I've also wrapped the build in Nix. So yeah I'll do the same - if it ever stops working I'll just pin the build inputs at the last version that worked.

I _think_ the Hugo folks seem to understand the "just build my fucking HTML templates" principle. I.e. for most use cases the job of a static site generator is simple enough that breaking compatibility is literally never justified. So hopefully pinning won't be necessary.

Re: The End of Eleventy

#133

Post by pjmlp »

red_admiral wrote: post #131
pjmlp wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you imagine it used to be when everything was commercial? On the plus side, at least there wasn't that many magpie development, and rewrites just because. Subscriptions are the only way to fix piracy.

Programs were distributed on stacks of diskettes, towards the end of that era on CD-ROMs. There was no licence server to phone home to on the internet. You bought Borland C++ compiler, installed it and used it - you were free to buy the next version when it came out or not.

There are plenty of programs where you can still do that, that gladly accept one time license payment.

However think on your own salary and how many copies you need to sell, at what price, per month, to receive the same monetary amount after taxes.

Add to it, the amount of new user acquisitions per month, to keep a sustainable salary level.

Re: The End of Eleventy

#134

Post by amadeuspagel »

> The truth is, there has been no successful CMS for static-site generators because the only people that give a fuck about creating static sites would much prefer to use a (free and local) IDE and a terminal.

I'm not sure how successful they are, but pinegrow[1] is a thing. It's not worth it to me to pay $99 per year for a personal website (the only static site I want), but there are many people who have static websites that are an essential part of a profitable business and these people don't necessarily want to use the terminal.

[1]: https://pinegrow.com/

Re: The End of Eleventy

#135

Post by peteforde »

sublinear wrote: post #117
peteforde wrote: post #58

Many folks on HN are the exact sorts of people who have lived the thankless popular-enough-to-be-an-unpaid-job solo OSS maintainer dream, so I wonder if you feel as annoyed by the tone of this post as I do. I truly don't understand how the same folks that champion accessibility and humane ideals while humble bragging about working for $5/hour to help get local businesses online can throw so much shade on people who a…

> I wish they would channel their frustrations into helping to find a sustainable model for OSS creators to make a living wage to keep the magic coming I know you don't want to hear the obvious, but making your passion your paycheck is a one-way ticket to burnout. Even your heroes are still human. The passion is the magic , and keeping it going requires contrast with something else as a day job. You really don't want…

You make some excellent points. Especially wrt how the fastest way to hate what you love is to rely upon it to pay the bills.

That said, I do feel as though you're presenting a nuanced topic as a false dichotomy. There's lots of people who have figured out how to build something sustainable that blurs the line between occupation and enjoyment. We only tend to pathologize when talking about folks who haven't figured out how to make what they created into a flywheel.

The real trick is to figure out a viable structure to fund a lot more projects. Kickstarter, Patreon, Etsy, even GitHub Sponsors are steps in a positive direction. Things really are better for builders than they were 20 years ago. That should be celebrated.

Yet, I think it's very likely that there's something just as disruptive (in a positive way) for OSS and makers in general as, for example, OnlyFans was for adult content that we just haven't stumbled on yet. So when I implore the person who wrote the OP to focus on solutions, this is broadly what I was hoping for.

Re: The End of Eleventy

#136

Post by estimator7292 »

pjmlp wrote: post #92
trinix912 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is true, but nowadays most paid projects end up being perpetual subscriptions. Which I kind of get, as on-going maintenance still costs, but it used to be that you paid for a tool once and only paid again if you wanted/needed an updated version. I'd gladly pay $15-$60 for a tool once (and again if I needed an update) but $10-$15 per month for 20 different things (that I will only use occasionally) is just out of…

How do you imagine it used to be when everything was commercial? On the plus side, at least there wasn't that many magpie development, and rewrites just because. Subscriptions are the only way to fix piracy.

"Rent-seeking is the only way to fix piracy" is an interesting take.

It seems to be going very well for video and music streaming services. Piracy is certainly nearly dead at this point and not at all at record-high levels.

Re: The End of Eleventy

#137

Post by peteforde »

slopinthebag wrote: post #84
peteforde wrote: post #58

Many folks on HN are the exact sorts of people who have lived the thankless popular-enough-to-be-an-unpaid-job solo OSS maintainer dream, so I wonder if you feel as annoyed by the tone of this post as I do. I truly don't understand how the same folks that champion accessibility and humane ideals while humble bragging about working for $5/hour to help get local businesses online can throw so much shade on people who a…

Idk if it's fair to characterise someone helping build a "community-driven directory to help people discover and connect with grassroots organizations, clubs, activist groups, and community initiatives" as "working for $5/hour to help get local businesses online". It's akin to complaining that pro-bono work devalues the profession of law. It feels like there is entitlement on both sides. People who do OSS work feel e…

You make some excellent points, but what I think your perspective lacks is empathy. This stuff is so complicated.

If someone starts working on a project in college and 3-4 years later it blows up, they might now have a young family to consider. The person working on this thing that people love is no longer the same person who started it. In other words: life happened. Perspectives change.

It's also kind of pointless to deny human nature and we should at least try to assume best intentions; it's one thing to say all of the Rich Hickey stuff, and you might even believe it at the beginning of a project. X years later when someone raises $20M to build a company around the best parts of what you did and often forgets to mention you in the origin story... I suspect that would mess with you, and all of that stuff about entitlement would start to feel a bit thin. I don't begrudge people for those emotions, because it's not my place to do so and I see myself in their imperfect-ness.

Ultimately, I am optimistic that we will continue to establish better and better ways to create sustainable projects with maintainers that are compensated for their efforts.

Re: The End of Eleventy

#138

Post by PaulHoule »

trinix912 wrote: post #83
pjmlp wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ultimate entitlement is refusing to pay for tooling, while expecting to be getting a paid job as well. I am hard line on not feeling sorry for projects going away, being taken over by organisations, when it mattered people should have actually sponsored them, instead of bosting how great is to get it all for free/gratis. Every, single time, someone posts a cool paid project, there is the usual comment why pay, lo…

That is true, but nowadays most paid projects end up being perpetual subscriptions. Which I kind of get, as on-going maintenance still costs, but it used to be that you paid for a tool once and only paid again if you wanted/needed an updated version. I'd gladly pay $15-$60 for a tool once (and again if I needed an update) but $10-$15 per month for 20 different things (that I will only use occasionally) is just out of…

Working for a SaaS company is the greatest thing if you are a software developer who doesn't care about business: even if you don't care about business the business cares about you!

There was an article in Byte magazine circa 1983 describing this dilemma: you release a successful 1.0 of a product, get a pulse of money, hold back some of it to develop 2.0, N months later version 2.0 competes with not only your competitors but with 1.0 in the minds of your most satisfied customers. Now if you're planning for N months and it is really N+M they have to scramble for money to pay your paycheck or release the product before it is ready or both. If you're laid off you could be one of the lucky ones because working under those conditions can be a living hell.

I'm glad I'm working on a service because even if a project I am working on is critical to acquiring and retaining customers it's not an automatic crisis that a project is a little late.

In the last 10 years or so SaaS seems like an investor-driven fad driven by the ease of putting a valuation on a consistent cashflow, but I think it is more basic than that.

That's not to say that the 'anti-consumer' concerns aren't real. Also with generative AI we are seeing that some things need to account for the resources they use. In the 2010s I was looking at a family of proto-AI businesses where my business partner and I were struggling with pricing, like we could not set an $X/month price such that (i) some users might not cost 10$X or 100$X a month to serve and (ii) that $X doesn't exceed the value the subscriber would get from the service for many users thus you don't make the sale. Yet we also liked the idea of stable revenue and boy all the software biz people and investors we talked to couldn't see past the "S, M, L, XL" subscription model.

Re: The End of Eleventy

#139

Post by latexr »

pjmlp wrote: post #92
trinix912 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is true, but nowadays most paid projects end up being perpetual subscriptions. Which I kind of get, as on-going maintenance still costs, but it used to be that you paid for a tool once and only paid again if you wanted/needed an updated version. I'd gladly pay $15-$60 for a tool once (and again if I needed an update) but $10-$15 per month for 20 different things (that I will only use occasionally) is just out of…

How do you imagine it used to be when everything was commercial? On the plus side, at least there wasn't that many magpie development, and rewrites just because. Subscriptions are the only way to fix piracy.

> Subscriptions are the only way to fix piracy.

Adobe tools are subscriptions and they get pirated all the time.

Re: The End of Eleventy

#140

Post by PaulHoule »

pjmlp wrote: post #119
classified wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Subscriptions are the only way to fix piracy. I'm not so sure. If they can't pay for a one-time purchase, they won't be able to afford a subscription. Subscriptions are always more expensive in the end, that's why they exist in the first place. I don't see how people not using the software while still not becoming customers is a fix to anything.

Subscriptions look cheaper for many folks. As for being able to afford them, yes it cuts people out, many of whom would pirated anyway. Digital stores, API keys, and SaaS seem to be doing alright

Subscriptions can be cheaper in some ways and more expensive than others.

Adobe Creative Suite used to require a one time eye-watering payment and very few people could afford to keep it up to date, you might skip several upgrades before buying the next one if you did at all.

CC's monthly payment makes it easy to enter. You are paying more in the long term than if you bought one version of it, but less than you'd pay if you kept your subscription up -- so somebody could make the case that it is more expensive than it used to be or less expensive than it used to be.

Post reply on HN