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Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

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Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#291

Post by bodge5000 »

jeremyjh wrote: post #194
bodge5000 wrote: post #160

There are a lot of comments to the tune of "why does a CSS library need 1m+ (or any money at all) to survive?". I'm no expert on this kind of thing, but Tailwind 0.1.0 first released on November 2017. Since then, there's been continual improvements up until last month with 4.1.18, totalling 8 years of dev work. A simple CSS library wouldn't have much need to go past 0.1.0, certainly not 1.0.0. Clearly tailwind did, w…

I could dig and fill in holes in my backyard for 8 years but that doesn't mean I created value or justified the time spent. The library has been good enough for widespread adoption since like 2020 at the latest - did it really need a team of 9 people working on it the last six years? What is there to show for that?

Sure, but if you stop digging and filling in those holes nobody is gonna care. People clearly do care if Tailwind stops development, thats where this whole thing stemmed from; someone opened a PR and it wasn't getting merged in

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#292

Post by bodge5000 »

sixhobbits wrote: post #223
bodge5000 wrote: post #160

There are a lot of comments to the tune of "why does a CSS library need 1m+ (or any money at all) to survive?". I'm no expert on this kind of thing, but Tailwind 0.1.0 first released on November 2017. Since then, there's been continual improvements up until last month with 4.1.18, totalling 8 years of dev work. A simple CSS library wouldn't have much need to go past 0.1.0, certainly not 1.0.0. Clearly tailwind did, w…

I'm more of a backend guy but afaik most popular backend frameworks like Django, Rails, Laravel etc have 10+ years of top-level work and run on much smaller annual budgets. Not saying that it's right, and there's a whole philosophical debate about open source being financially sustainable, but in terms of "You can't expect a decade of work for free" - I think you can and many people do.

> "You can't expect a decade of work for free" - I think you can and many people do.

You can't. People can give a decade of work away for free and thats a very nice thing to do, but its not an obligation and never should be. You are right, people are now expecting it, and that's why the push against that expectation is so important.

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#293

Post by Culonavirus »

skybrian wrote: post #269
Culonavirus wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How much money do you really need to maintain a CSS library? Seems to me like Tailwind is a relatively complex beast covering a lot of ground, not to mention that web browsers are living/evergreen projects that are costantly moving forward, and so the lib needs frequent updates. I don't think you can avoid this (just by the nature of the project). You also need to be a css expert who follows the browser and feature…

If browsers are breaking old CSS, making new releases necessary, then that seems like a bad situation. I thought browsers were good at maintaining backward compatibility? Not so for Tailwind?

I mean just go over v4.x.x release changelogs [0].

The "web platform" is evolving at a decent pace in general [1][2]. You can sometimes do the same thing in 50 different ways (thanks to the breadth of css features and js apis and backwards compatibility), but there may be a much more elegant and robust solution on the horizon and when it hits the baseline, chances are it would likely lead to a simpler framework codebase and/or shrinked output if integrated... and therefore such a feature should be integrated. Now do this a zillion times over the life of the project. You have to keep up.

Less hacks, less code, smaller outputs.

And THEN you have all the bug reports and new feature requests.

And THEN you're supposed to work on something built on top of Tailwind that you can actually sell so you have something to eat tomorrow.

[0]: https://github.com/tailwindlabs/tailwindcss/releases

[1]: https://web.dev/blog

[2]: https://developer.chrome.com/new

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#294

Post by skybrian »

Culonavirus wrote: post #293
skybrian wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If browsers are breaking old CSS, making new releases necessary, then that seems like a bad situation. I thought browsers were good at maintaining backward compatibility? Not so for Tailwind?

I mean just go over v4.x.x release changelogs [0]. The "web platform" is evolving at a decent pace in general [1][2]. You can sometimes do the same thing in 50 different ways (thanks to the breadth of css features and js apis and backwards compatibility), but there may be a much more elegant and robust solution on the horizon and when it hits the baseline, chances are it would likely lead to a simpler framework codeb…

If the old way didn't break, it's not true that you have to change it. You can ignore the new stuff if you want to.

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#295

Post by tpmoney »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #220
tpmoney wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say you're paying your devs $100k / year. All in costs on those devs are probably $150k or so. That means your $1m / year will fund 6 full time developers with a little left over. This podcast from the CEO[1] says their engineering team was 4 people and the remaining staff is the 3 owners, the 1 remaining engineer, and one part time customer support person. So assuming every full time person was costing $150k i…

The question is still why you need multiple devs worth 150-250kpa to maintain a CSS library.

Well they clearly don't "need" that many devs just to maintain it, since they just laid off most of their devs. But "need" and "want / have the revenue/work to hire and sustain" are different questions. I've never worked a single development position where there wasn't always more work to do and not enough people or time to do it. It appears they previously did have the revenue, and presumably had the work. Now they don't have the revenue, and so they had to let people go, and some of that work will go undone or take longer.

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#296

Post by no-name-here »

patates wrote: post #274
Maro wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the most popular UI system (especially for AI models) Like others earlier in the thread I'm symphatetic to this company/project, but your code/project being referenced often in AI output in itself doesn't imply that the thing needs to be a business. bash, curl, awk, Python code with numpy imports, C++, all sorts of code is constantly being generated by AI, doesn't mean curl or numpy should be its own company, or th…

When very important tooling does not have very impressive funding, you get the xkcd 2347 situation very quickly.

That’s the All Modern Digital Infrastructure relying on a dependency a Nebraskan has been thanklessly maintaining since 2003 one: https://xkcd.com/2347/

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#297

Post by ib33 »

hu3 wrote: post #260
ib33 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how would you adjust Shadcn salaries to account for this additional work? Do we expect open source labour to be subsidised by maintainers while the rest of us find work at FAANG?

How much work are we talking? It would be in their best interest to keep "openwind" stable since changes to the CSS lib would require extra work in their component. Different incentives.

Enough for multiple full time jobs. They've laid off staff who handled tasks they can no longer afford to pay for.

Is keeping both stable in their best interest or yours?

The set of options includes choosing to not keep anything stable. They can abandon both and go do other things. If the market wants them to keep x alive, it can offer a premium.

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#298

Post by hu3 »

ib33 wrote: post #297
hu3 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much work are we talking? It would be in their best interest to keep "openwind" stable since changes to the CSS lib would require extra work in their component. Different incentives.

Enough for multiple full time jobs. They've laid off staff who handled tasks they can no longer afford to pay for. Is keeping both stable in their best interest or yours? The set of options includes choosing to not keep anything stable. They can abandon both and go do other things. If the market wants them to keep x alive, it can offer a premium.

We'll have to agree to disagree then.

Because to me Tailwind maintenance look like a 2 devs jobs at best.

They have 3 founders. They don't even need to hire.

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#299

Post by rurban »

patates wrote: post #274
Maro wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the most popular UI system (especially for AI models) Like others earlier in the thread I'm symphatetic to this company/project, but your code/project being referenced often in AI output in itself doesn't imply that the thing needs to be a business. bash, curl, awk, Python code with numpy imports, C++, all sorts of code is constantly being generated by AI, doesn't mean curl or numpy should be its own company, or th…

When very important tooling does not have very impressive funding, you get the xkcd 2347 situation very quickly.

Not very important. Just sugar for webdevs.

Change the pricing model and you'll better off

Re: Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS

#300

Post by apublicfrog »

andruby wrote: post #237
AlecSchueler wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is still why you need multiple devs worth 150-250kpa to maintain a CSS library.

The question isn't "what is the lowest cost that a CSS library could be maintained for" The question is rather, how can the most popular UI system (especially for AI models) have a healthy business model? Think of the immense value that Tailwind is bringing to all the companies and developers using it. Surely there should be a way for the creators to capture a small slice of that in our economic system.

> The question is rather, how can the most popular UI system (especially for AI models) have a healthy business model?

My question is why does it need one? Most web libraries I've used for the last few decades have not had any corporate structure and certainly haven't made a profit. They're done because someone wanted to showcase their skills and others got involved to help, or for fun or because a company who does something else built them internally and decided to open source.

We don't need to apply capitalism to everything. Not everything needs a profit and scale.

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