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

Announcing Caddy Commercial Licenses

caddyserver.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 295 posts

Re: Announcing Caddy Commercial Licenses

#211

Post by tylersmith »

Whitestrake wrote: post #29
romanovcode wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I guess you're right. But then again setting up NGINX with auto SSL would be easier so what's the point. Personally for me Caddy is (was) good because of how easy it is to set it up.

I'm not sure I agree with you there. The most popular Docker image for Caddy, for example, should soon (if it's not already) be compiled from source, rather than from the build server. That means it will remain free to use, and I personally don't have to make a single change. If this has impacted you negatively to the point where setting up nginx is an easier option, well - that's the beauty of choice!

But the software in that image will still be written by untrustworthy adware developers. _That_ is the issue.

Re: Announcing Caddy Commercial Licenses

#212

Post by pushcx »

unethical_ban wrote: post #181
mattbee wrote: post #172

@mholt is being exceedingly generous to the whingers on this thread, on top of the generosity he's shown in writing Caddy to start with. It's not 2005 any more, Sun Microsystems is long gone. You won't raise any money from a business model that gives away your best work or selling support contracts alone. Caddy is a real innovation, and brings web server defaults bang up to date - it makes loads of complex configurat…

Eh. Still kind of shitty to have had access and then have it removed, and then say 'nothing has really changed, guys!'. If they rephrased it to admit they're moving to a Red Hat model of "pay for binary", the news would have fared better. More straightforward, with a direct comparison to a current, successful brand. Let's face it: They realized their product was popular, took advantage of tons of interest and documen…

Yes, he gave you free stuff and then reduced how much free stuff he gave you. That must be very hard on you.

Re: Announcing Caddy Commercial Licenses

#213

Post by fooey »

mattbee wrote: post #172

@mholt is being exceedingly generous to the whingers on this thread, on top of the generosity he's shown in writing Caddy to start with. It's not 2005 any more, Sun Microsystems is long gone. You won't raise any money from a business model that gives away your best work or selling support contracts alone. Caddy is a real innovation, and brings web server defaults bang up to date - it makes loads of complex configurat…

What I think is interesting, is the licensing model is basically reverse whaling

The bigger the company is, the more likely they are to go with just building Caddy themselves instead of paying for it. So, the only people who need to run the commercial binaries are the situations where the licensing costs actually matter.

Maybe I'm underestimating the size of the demographic they're targeting, but it seems to me that the only market for Caddy is a fairly small niche of people who are unwilling/unable to run NGINX or set up their own build process.

Re: Announcing Caddy Commercial Licenses

#214

Post by derefr »

jimjimjim wrote: post #180
derefr wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the time required to negotiate a custom commercial license costs more than the license is worth (and/or more than the switching cost) for most personal users. I was using Caddy because I don't have time in my day to configure Nginx; but I also don't have time in my day to build Caddy from source to repackage+deploy it to my infrastructure. So back to Nginx it is. What I would have time in my day for is a standar…

you don't have time to recompile a software package but you do have time to read hackernews? is time the right word here?

My job pays me units of money in exchange for a finite time per day spent dedicated to advancing their goals. There are more potential things to do for the company than fit into the time they pay me to spend; and I'm not going to work for free past that time just to fit all those things in. Therefore, I have to optimize—to choose which things are most worth the company's time. Compiling and configuring software packages are rather low on that list (which shouldn't be surprising, given that I'm a programmer, not an ops person.)

I read HN on my own time.

Re: Announcing Caddy Commercial Licenses

#215

Post by mholt »

gtirloni wrote: post #185
iampims wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Answering my own question: it is now my understanding that caddy relies on a custom build system to generate custom builds on the fly for its plugins. Publishing all combinations on GH wouldn't make much sense given the combination explosion for any new plugin.

That's excellent. Most people don't seem to use plugins so a default build is enough for them. Those who need it have a business need now and can either setup their own build system or pay Caddy for that. Value is generated as opposed to being subtracted (from the current status quo).

More than 50% of Caddy downloads have at least one plugin. 1 and 2 plugins are the most common of those that have at least one.

Re: Announcing Caddy Commercial Licenses

#216

Post by kbenson »

lol768 wrote: post #23

> As of version 0.10.9, Caddy emits an HTTP response header, Caddy-Sponsors, which is similar to the Server header that Caddy already has, except that this one credits our sponsors who make it possible to keep Caddy free for personal use. This header cannot be removed by the Caddyfile, and its presence is required by the non-commercial EULA. This requirement is waived by the commercial license, so the header is not p…

> Second edit: Accusation of trademark violation within an hour of the fork, classy! https://github.com/WedgeServer/wedge/issues/2

This is just like Red Hat. He's put a lot of work into his product, whether free or not, so don't use trademarked name. CentOS has the same restrictions about not using Red Hat in their distribution. This is just like someone releasing a book for free, and getting mad at someone that decides to sell (or give it away) under the same name when they've trademarked the name. Don't do that. If you're going to copy it, change the name.

Also, keep in mind a trademark is only good as long as you enforce it. If you don't enforce your trademark, it can be seen as (and argued in court as) having become a generic name, and you lose it.[1]

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericize...

Re: Announcing Caddy Commercial Licenses

#217

Post by gshulegaard »

PenguinCoder wrote: post #189

To everyone saying that Caddy made it simple for automated LE; I agree, but also, it's not that difficult to setup with NGINX: Edit /var/nginx/ssl_common.conf ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/ /fullchain.pem; ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/ /privkey.pem; location ^~ /.well-known/acme-challenge/ { default_type "text/plain"; allow all; root /var/www/example; auth_basic off; } Edit crontab, add: 30 2 * *…

Small improvement, but `reload` should do this while gracefully terminating connections:

https://www.guyrutenberg.com/2017/01/01/lets-encrypt-reload-...

http://nginx.org/en/docs/beginners_guide.html

Basically `reload` should have the external appearance of 0 downtime.

Re: Announcing Caddy Commercial Licenses

#219

Post by [deleted] »

tylersmith wrote: post #203
mholt wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know devs who use Sublime Text almost indefinitely without paying. They don't mind the little "Hey don't forget to buy" popup every once in a while. We aren't putting popups on your site. :P

No, you're injecting data into traffic. That's way worse than a text editor occasionally reminding you you haven't paid.

[deleted]

Re: Announcing Caddy Commercial Licenses

#220

Post by NuSkooler »

mholt wrote: post #197
NuSkooler wrote: post #193

Hi Matt! I've been using and advocating for Caddy for a while now, but I have to say this is a huge put-off. Don't get me wrong here, I'm in full support of a commercial version... but as you can see from the feedback here, this kind of thing is really frowned upon in the personal / OSS space for a variety of reasons. I encourage you to re-consider added headers. Perhaps look at a more heavy handed download process s…

Thanks for your comments. I think that this thread can be added to the bucket of all the others that reveal the unhealthy expectation in the FOSS community, and I'm not convinced that the "variety of reasons" are compelling. It's regrettable that our announcement today is so controversial. As much as a donation model is easy and safe, it is not a business plan. (We tried it.)

To be clear, I'm not advocating for a donation model instead of a free personal use vs paid commercial. I'm suggesting to remove the header and urge personal users to donate a bit.

> and I'm not convinced that the "variety of reasons" are compelling.

I really don't want to be a jerk here, but you don't need to be convinced. If the general community feels a certain way, and you wish for said community to favor you, you must abide.

Post reply on HN