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Herdr is joining Y Combinator. The runtime stays open

herdr.dev

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Re: Herdr is joining Y Combinator. The runtime stays open

#31

Post by spudlyo »

rajangdavis wrote: post #27
spudlyo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Radix enim omnium malorum est cupiditas. Enshitification is sure to follow in one guise or another.

I don’t know that this qualifies as enshitification… on one hand, the author created something that scratched his own itch, shared it, and now it’s become a tool that he wishes to steward into a way where he can make money. I don’t know that these are terrible things inherently, it kind of depends if he wishes to extract as money as possible from his users by any means necessary or if he’s truly trying to scale it so…

In my cynical view, herder now seems to be an attempt to commercialize tmux by adding superficial polish. I am wary of VC backed developer tools that seek to innovate in well established open source niches. Herdr by default is mouse focused, has very friendly UI interactions, and has some niche UI support for agents running in panes. Great. Now it also has a profit motive and ROI pressures. I don't see this ending well.

Re: Herdr is joining Y Combinator. The runtime stays open

#32

Post by rovr138 »

rvz wrote: post #10

Quick question: Would you have actually donated to Herdr if they were asking for donations? I don't think any of you would have, unless stated otherwise. So this is another reason why developers do not pay for their tools and instead the developers of these tools go to VCs anyway. It's not the fault of the author, but most of the users (developers themselves) always want their tools for free at $0. You have to pay an…

I actually donate to a bunch of tools I use.

Re: Herdr is joining Y Combinator. The runtime stays open

#34

Post by inigyou »

guywithahat wrote: post #29
tyre wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The copyleft licenses are toxic for adoption. Companies default away from them because there are a lot of murky unknowns (e.g. if you run a copyleft service and connect to it via API, is that extending it? Does that service’s source have to be shared?) that simply aren’t worth the hassle. If you want your library to get traction with many real world use cases, you need to have a permissive license. If you want to sti…

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted, you're right. Using software that has requires people to contribute back is a huge liability, and hurts adoption, which is the most important metric for herdr right now.

They're right, but they're presenting it in a way as if the toxicity of AGPL is the actual truth, and not just the opinion of greedy corporations.

Being toxic to greedy corporations but beneficial to everyone else is the point of the GPL licenses.

Re: Herdr is joining Y Combinator. The runtime stays open

#35

Post by inigyou »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #30
guywithahat wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted, you're right. Using software that has requires people to contribute back is a huge liability, and hurts adoption, which is the most important metric for herdr right now.

Seems like the path is to use LLMs to launder code from VC funded efforts and their public codebases into codebases with a copyleft license. Otherwise you have to wait for the rug pull before taking action (Terraform and Vault->OpenTofu and OpenBao). It is fair use to train and create derivative works after all, as courts have ruled so far.

You can just take someone else's permissively licensed code and relicense it AGPL, or even proprietary if you want to. Corporations want it proprietary but the same trick works for copyleft.

For bonus points make sure your fork has better SEO than the original, so when someone who heard it's permissive embeds it in a proprietary product, you can sue them.

Re: Herdr is joining Y Combinator. The runtime stays open

#37

Post by inigyou »

rajangdavis wrote: post #27
spudlyo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Radix enim omnium malorum est cupiditas. Enshitification is sure to follow in one guise or another.

I don’t know that this qualifies as enshitification… on one hand, the author created something that scratched his own itch, shared it, and now it’s become a tool that he wishes to steward into a way where he can make money. I don’t know that these are terrible things inherently, it kind of depends if he wishes to extract as money as possible from his users by any means necessary or if he’s truly trying to scale it so…

If he wants to make money he needs to sell licenses, not give them away for free. To that end, making the free version AGPL is generally a good move. It ensures people can get hooked on your product and when they start working at corporations they have to pay to keep using it.

Re: Herdr is joining Y Combinator. The runtime stays open

#38

Post by inigyou »

sarky-litso wrote: post #21
pecheny wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why “find” an alternative? if you’re a herdr user you’re perfectly capable of maintaining a fork just for yourself :)

I can't tell if this is sarcasm but in case its not, being capable of doing something and having the desire and resources to do it are not the same thing

It's a management tool for multiple superintelligent agents, right? Just tell one of them to fork herdr so VC can't make it worse on purpose.

Re: Herdr is joining Y Combinator. The runtime stays open

#39

Post by toomuchtodo »

inigyou wrote: post #35
toomuchtodo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like the path is to use LLMs to launder code from VC funded efforts and their public codebases into codebases with a copyleft license. Otherwise you have to wait for the rug pull before taking action (Terraform and Vault->OpenTofu and OpenBao). It is fair use to train and create derivative works after all, as courts have ruled so far.

You can just take someone else's permissively licensed code and relicense it AGPL, or even proprietary if you want to. Corporations want it proprietary but the same trick works for copyleft. For bonus points make sure your fork has better SEO than the original, so when someone who heard it's permissive embeds it in a proprietary product, you can sue them.

Was assuming worse case scenario from a licensing compatibility and copyright perspective.

Re: Herdr is joining Y Combinator. The runtime stays open

#40

Post by user- »

Congrats to Can! I am using Herdr and i think its a great tool. A modern solo dev success story , very inspirational.

I see some negative comments here that I could understand why funding scares them when it comes to their open source tool but like.. atleast congratulate the guy.

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