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

Skip is now free and open source

skip.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 235 posts

Re: Skip is now free and open source

#181

Post by wahnfrieden »

xmprt wrote: post #177

This is great for Skip users, but I'm curious how they plan on monetizing for long term sustainability. Donations are notoriously not sustainable and if they weren't able to get enough in license fees before, I don't see how they will get more donations in the future. Unless the plan is that by increasing the user base, the product will get significantly better so that even if there's a smaller percentage of donators…

Looks like they will rely on enterprise customers who pay for priority support access.

Re: Skip is now free and open source

#182

Post by wahnfrieden »

gpm wrote: post #56
zahlman wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LGPL3 has now been added: https://github.com/skiptools/skip/commit/7ad94680a801ca393fe...

Huh, what does one have to do to comply with the LGPL on iOS anyways? I'm sort of surprised that only the largest plan ($5000/month) and not the ($10/$500/$2,500/month plans) includes a license that doesn't involve figuring that nonsense out.

You aren't shipping the LGPL part of Skip with your app. It's a build tool.

You don't need to worry about using (L)GPL build tools to produce non-GPL apps.

You have nothing to worry about with this license unless you are forking the Skip build tool itself. You can't ship this build tool to the App Store anyway, it's a build tool and not code you run inside your app.

Re: Skip is now free and open source

#183

Post by igogq425 »

I read appeals here asking developers to please pay for their tools. I would like to point out that collective behavior cannot be changed by appealing to individuals.

Furthermore, it is the employer's responsibility to provide tools for employees. I'm not going to get into a tug-of-war with my employer over this. I simply work with the tools I am provided.

For self-employed individuals and companies, this should be regulated by the market. If competitiveness correlates with the use of the right tools, the problem should resolve itself. If this correlation does not exist, then it is questionable whether these tools have any added value at all.

If this market mechanism does not work properly because Big Tech systematically undermines it, then it might be appropriate to consider whether this could (or could not) represent a more far-reaching social problem and what solutions there might be. If you go down that route (which I would advocate), it very quickly becomes very political. In any case, it should be clear that this problem cannot be solved by simply shouting at developers: “Pay for your tools!”

What complicates matters further is that our work requires more than just tools in the narrow sense. The entire stack, down to the compiler, web server, and ultimately the operating system and operating system kernel, is based on countless hours of unpaid human labor. On the one hand, it would render us incapable of acting if we were to economically quantify this entire value chain like Diocletian and then insist on slapping an appropriate price tag on it. On the other hand, there is no justification for why we should only do this with the tip of the iceberg that we call tools.

Re: Skip is now free and open source

#184

Post by wahnfrieden »

ashishb wrote: post #95

There have been several iterations to have a unified way to build Android and iOS apps. - using HTML - using JavaScript - using JS+React - using Dart - using Kotlin - using Swift This fundamentally does not work for anyone with more than 10M+ installs just like you can't write Mandarin and English in one script. This only works for devs who over time churn out as their app fails or becomes too big [1] 1 - https://ash…

Goodnotes has tens of millions of monthly-active users (not just installs) and uses Swift WASM to run the same Swift code across iOS, Android, Windows, and web.

Re: Skip is now free and open source

#185

Post by OldOneEye »

mdasen wrote: post #154
nsm wrote: post #70

> The plain truth is that developers expect to get their tools free of charge. This is an accurate, but damning indictment of how some of the most highly paid workers on the planet won't pay for tools. Unlike nearly every other profession. Folks, if you can afford it, please pay for quality software, instead of relying on FAANG and VC money to keep the tools going!

It's not simply that developers expect to get their tools for free. So many developers have seen the rug-pulls and exploitation of non-free tools. Build on Oracle and your company will need to hire more lawyers than developers. Even in less-exploitive situations, we've seen a lot of situations where things become many times more expensive. Google AppEngine moved from charging based on usage to charging based on insta…

Completely agree with you. I skip most of the new tools that come out, because the ones I use already work well for me, and the probability of the new tool disappearing fast is high.

Learning a new tool is a mental effort that makes sense for the seller to propose, but doesn't for me. My mental energy is better spent on my loved ones. It has to be truly revolutionary for me to invest time into it, like the LLM stuff. But otherwise I've been happy with Bash, Vim, JetBrains products and Terraform for a very long while. I don't see any need to change that.

Re: Skip is now free and open source

#186

Post by jillesvangurp »

xmprt wrote: post #177

This is great for Skip users, but I'm curious how they plan on monetizing for long term sustainability. Donations are notoriously not sustainable and if they weren't able to get enough in license fees before, I don't see how they will get more donations in the future. Unless the plan is that by increasing the user base, the product will get significantly better so that even if there's a smaller percentage of donators…

Probably the usual models of offering support, training, and commercial add-ons.

Independent UI frameworks like this don't stand a chance in closed source form if the main competition is all free and OSS, widely used, and high quality.

Interestingly, they went for LGPL 3 here. Nothing wrong with that as an OSS license. But I don't think it's the best license for the job here depending on their intentions. This might actually limit the enthusiasm of people to jump on this. At least they didn't go for AGPL 3 here. That would be a show stopper for many companies. Not much better than just flat out requiring a commercial license.

However, if you want to go all in on free and open source for commercial usage by whomever, probably a permissive license provides the least amount of friction for that. Since it just explicitly allows and encourages that sort of thing rather than attempting to constrain it.

If your goal is wide adoption and supporting a diverse community of contributors that are getting paid through their day job to work on this, that's generally what works best. Most of the mainstream UI frameworks are under licenses like that and for good reasons. SwiftUI, Flutter, Compose Multiplatform, React and React Native, etc. are all licensed permissively. There's a rich ecosystem of independent component and tool developers around those frameworks using similar licenses. Lots of competition as well; this is a very competitive space.

Permissive licensing is what enables ecosystems like that to form. And whether Skip likes it or not; that kind of is the competition. That's where most of the OSS developers are. Developer communities that include developers from companies that commercially depend on the software are stronger and more resilient long term. Building such communities is hard work. Unfortunately, that usually means letting go of being in control.

Small OSS companies tend to be conflicted between their own needs (monetization, protecting their IP, VC interests, etc.) and the needs of the user and especially developer community (unencumbered usage, freedom to adapt and use, etc.). That's all understandable and easy to sympathize with. But it doesn't change the reality of users and developers voting with their feet and mainly using permissively licensed stuff. Because it's there and it works. Also, diverse communities mean that is likely to stay that way. It's a thing I look for in OSS stuff I choose to use.

Re: Skip is now free and open source

#187

Post by mfru »

nsm wrote: post #152
alt187 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the lowkey vibe that if you want quality software, you either have to pay for it or wait for FAANG money. Just ignore the most widely used operating system!

What money do you think pays for most of the development of the Linux kernel? I assure you, it is not the altruistic goodwill of people around the world.

How do you think did development of Linux work for the first many years until corporations saw the value Linux is providing? (and developers demanded they use their favorite operating system)

Re: Skip is now free and open source

#188

Post by letwhile »

internetter wrote: post #167
letwhile wrote: post #160

Can you please stop assuming that everyone knows your randomly named niche software and use a more descriptive title for your posts? Much appreciated.

Please refresh yourself on https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Please provide a helpful comment instead of "rtfm".

Re: Skip is now free and open source

#189

Post by matt_kn »

winrid wrote: post #46
skavi wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunno about Skip, but I can always tell when an app is Flutter. They feel like crap. Everything's a bit off with the native looking widgets. And fully custom designs still animate a bit weirdly. And they definitely still stutter. Somehow a tier below React Native.

Flutter re-generates the entire layout every tick and diffs it (immediate-mode), like a game engine. If your device isn't quite fast enough it'll lag, yep. RN is retained mode (but written in immediate-mode style and the diffing only happens when it has to).

That is absolutely not true. Elements with dirty layouts are tracked and layout is only recomputed up to the neearest layout boundary.

Re: Skip is now free and open source

#190

Post by matt_kn »

winrid wrote: post #148
SoKamil wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, I didn’t know that it was immediate mode. According to the article [1] though, it now uses rendering engine with Retained Mode due to performance issues. [1] https://medium.com/@0s.and.1s/flutter-part-iv-skia-vs-impell...

ah neat, so they rewrote the rendering engine in C++ and exposed it via Dart APIs, as opposed to everything being in Dart.

It has been like that since the very beginning (sky engine).
Post reply on HN