VoidZero Is Joining Cloudflare • Hacker News Board

Re: VoidZero Is Joining Cloudflare

#311

Post by yencabulator » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 3:38 PM UTC

dsl wrote: post #267

burcs wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sorry to hear that's been your experience. i actually joined through an acquisition about a year ago and one of the main things we've been focused on is the dashboard and overall dx. sadly "hostile ux" is a phrase i've heard more than once and we're working hard to improve. if you're open to it, would love to hear more about the issues you've be running into

You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become Akamai. The reason everyone came running when Cloudflare first started was obviously the "burn VC money to gain marketshare" but it was also the sheer simplicity. They had one product and a handful of features. Until someone on the business side takes a step back and says "when I mouse over 'Products' on the homepage, why the fuck is there a 'See All P…

Good meeting, appreciate the engagement, added new action items "add yet another way to do AI in Workers, say something about long schedule agentic driven" and "go to market with new unrelated Web Application Firewall product".

Re: VoidZero Is Joining Cloudflare

#312

Post by yencabulator » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 3:49 PM UTC

gonzalohm wrote: post #256

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this differ if Spain decided to block AWS IPs?

It doesn't, it's the same problem. But at least AWS provides more services. Cloudfare is just an extra layer to route traffic

Cloudflare does a lot more these days. You can run a JS app in Workers and any Linux app in a container. You can have them host your database and object storage.

Re: VoidZero Is Joining Cloudflare

#313

Post by yencabulator » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 3:51 PM UTC

Ajunne wrote: post #46

I love how they always make it sound like this is by choice. "VoidZero is joining Cloudflare" As if they chose to do that. Yes, they agreed to it, but in the end it was just a huge financial transaction. But i guess "Cloudflare buys VoidZero" just sounds less friendly. Even though that is exactly what happened.

Obligatory https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

Re: VoidZero Is Joining Cloudflare

#314

Post by runtime_terror » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 4:00 PM UTC

encom wrote: post #221

runtime_terror wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be forever my hero if you solve the rate limiting thing! One time I couldn't fix a production issue because I opened too many tabs. Thanks Brandon!

It's hysterical that CloudFlare is tarpitting their actual customers just the same as the rest of the public internet.

You really think an individual employee trying to help a customer when they likely have little impact on org wide issues like how customer support is run is tarpitting? Seems a bit uncharitable

Re: VoidZero Is Joining Cloudflare

#315

Post by yencabulator » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 4:00 PM UTC

joeyhage wrote: post #140

Everything Cloudflare is announcing could have been done without acquiring VoidZero. The part they aren’t saying is the greater influence they will have on the roadmap and protecting themselves from someone else acquiring vite and making it closed source and/or monetizing it. We’ve seen it so many times - a project promises to stay free and open source, but things change. Are there any licenses or contracts that a pr…

> Are there any licenses or contracts that a project could use and would hold up in court that they need to stay FOSS forever?

The Linux kernel is GPL with likely at least hundreds of copyright holders and no CLA, that means there is no way for someone to say "I am the legal owner and the new development will be under a proprietary license".

Re: VoidZero Is Joining Cloudflare

#316

Post by ipaddr » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 4:29 PM UTC

yencabulator wrote: post #312

gonzalohm wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't, it's the same problem. But at least AWS provides more services. Cloudfare is just an extra layer to route traffic

Cloudflare does a lot more these days. You can run a JS app in Workers and any Linux app in a container. You can have them host your database and object storage.

Great and I heard they offer haircuts at a discount. But they still block 25% of internet traffic

Re: VoidZero Is Joining Cloudflare

#317

Post by overfeed » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 5:26 PM UTC

borski wrote: post #295

overfeed wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VC funding rounds don't quality as an acquisition, AFAIK.

I agree, but I'm not sure how that's relevant?

The context at the root of the discussion, where potential acquirer's plan b is to hire the team instead.

Re: VoidZero Is Joining Cloudflare

#318

Post by bix6 » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 5:32 PM UTC

throwup238 wrote: post #179

bix6 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably that $12M A was around $50M Val so they need to sell for substantially more to give investors a multiple return.

Unless the investors have liquidation preference where they see their multiple before anyone else sees a dime.

Prefs are so bogus.

Re: VoidZero Is Joining Cloudflare

#319

Post by dbbk » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 6:44 PM UTC

yuppiepuppie wrote: post #83

So is the business model of these projects - 1. build a popular dev tool 2. aquire funding 3. hire great talent 4. pray for an aqui-hire that justifies the initial funding amount I wonder how the initial investors feel about the aqui-hire path... Must be a pretty nice sum for them to agree to it, or they saw that the path to any revenue was near impossible/non-existant

No their business model was a Vercel-like deployment platform that wrapped Cloudflare to make it simpler.

Re: VoidZero Is Joining Cloudflare

#320

Post by dbbk » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 6:45 PM UTC

olingern wrote: post #98

These acquisition announcements always leave me uneasy. There’s a lot of hand waving, “nothing will change and our roadmap will stay the same!” but we can all do basic math and understand that’s not how business works. As an aside, I have to use Cloudlare at work and it’s a pretty awful experience for the medium sized org I’m at. “Hostile UX” is a common complaint. Maybe they should invest money in competing with Ver…

I find that opinion odd considering they've been rapidly improving the dashboard and making the deployment process simpler - now it's one click from connecting GitHub.