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Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

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Re: Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

#491
post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> completely modern and professional And it looks completely the same, so much so that people can tell it's AI generated now simply due to the gradient, among other design choices LLMs seem to make by default: https://prg.sh/ramblings/Why-Your-AI-Keeps-Building-the-Same...

Isn't that an article about using a frontend aesthetics prompt in order to avoid the AI tells? A lot of the with-aesthetics pages look pretty good imo.

It's describing the problem and also giving a solution. The problem of vibe coded sites all looking the same is very real however, if you don't consciously and actively guide the LLM towards being different, as described in the article.

Re: Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

#492

Today, I wanted to add tailwind to a new project and realized I had purchased it back in 2022. So I went to the website and realized it had moved to tailwind plus. That’s how distracted I’ve been. To my surprise my access worked and I could still download the full UI kit. I know they promised lifetime, but I did not expect updates forever. This looks like the first issue to fix. I would have no issues paying 20% of p…

Lovable while claiming they are making $250m ARR heaving using Tailwind, doesnt even pay to support tailwind at all. Although with the AI companies you can never trust the numbers as they play the giving free trials and counting as future ARR game.

Great point here, the only thing that feels greedy to me is that these larger companies do not contribute back to the foundational libraries that they are building on, even to a minor extent for ecosystem improvements. Perhaps greedy is a strong word.

i’ve always felt that oss licenses needs to include responsible use terms or something. some orgs dont mind paying for value contributed but you need to provide a structure to do so, even if that is on a voluntary basis.

If anyone from Lovable etc sees these comments, great opportunity for sponsorship where it can make a difference upstream.

Some companies have done this well, at a stage Retool use to sponsor a number of open source libs which greatly helped them with exposure to devs. Surely a better way to spend ad revenue imo.

Re: Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

#493

Create a license that prevents AI companies that generate html based on tailwind from doing it without being in a commercial package. Let them know of the license change and give them 3 months to adjust. Keep tailwind accessible and allow that llm instruction to make it's way into the codebase so it gets picked up by multiple "AI" businesses that output code. This is your new business model. Open source was not ready…

It’s open source under an MIT license, I wouldn’t use Tailwind if it wasn’t open source but there is nothing stopping them from future releases being non-open source.

They can’t retroactively pull the license, and most people would just start using a OSS fork of tailwind if they did.

Re: Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

#494
post #26

The paid products Adam mentions are the pre-made components and templates, right? It seems like the bigger issue isn't reduced traffic but just that AI largely eliminates the need for such things. While I understand that this has been difficult for him and his company... hasn't it been obvious that this would be a major issue for years? I do worry about what this means for the future of open source software. We've lo…

I bought a Tailwind Plus trial a few years ago and I've been using AI tools since they came out. I typically find the block or template I want to use via the Tailwind Plus site and then feed it into Claude Code and ask the agent to modify them as required. This has been working well for me. I think the problem is that the Internet is absolutely full of people who expect free shit and never even consider paying for it…

[deleted]

Re: Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

#495
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I didn't ask how to do a bait and switch to offer a good free product and later ask for more money or else I'm going to make it worse. But I guess nuance is hard to understand. Also it's always funny when someone tries to look up your past instead of giving convincing arguments.

That's not a bait and switch my dude, lmao. Bait and switch only applies when the initial price is something other than $0 but still low.

Re: Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

#496
post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about in GitHub comments like everyone else? You're just self-promoting

[flagged]

Everyone else is commenting, Adam's message was text based. Probably best to keep the conversation text than interjected with video obviously...

Re: Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

#497

The truth is, business opportunities are rarely eternal, usually they are just an opportunity to make money within a short window of time, such as a decade or two. Sometimes even shorter than that, perhaps even only a year or two. For Tailwind, time’s up. If the engineering team could not be directed to build new products that bring in revenue, then there is no need for them anymore, the opportunity has been exhauste…

> The truth is, business opportunities are rarely eternal, usually they are just an opportunity to make money within a short window of time, such as a decade or two. Sometimes even shorter than that, perhaps even only a year or two.

Agreed, and Adam and Steve made a life-changing amount of money from Refactoring UI and then Tailwind UI. That's a great outcome on its own.

Re: Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

#498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"selling premade software assets" is a business, and it's the business both Tailwind and Envato were in. Both businesses got hit hard by AI. Check out Envato's homepage now. It's unrecognizable from what it was in 2017, and completely genAI oriented.

I think you're just repeating the same point I'm making. The point is they're not good businesses, hence why Envato pivoted and Tailwind soon might need to as well.

You're shifting your argument, first you said it's not a business. Any business can be good/bad depends on climate and over time. It was a business and many busienss in the current era of AI will face such challenges. All business just need to constatly adapt over time aka innovate.

Re: Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

#499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguments for... somebody wanting to get paid for their work? What are you doing?

Normally you ask for payment upfront, not years after.

Please, just admit you're wrong. It's ok.

Re: Creators of Tailwind laid off 75% of their engineering team

#500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies like Vercel, Lovable, and Stackblitz should dissolve because their existence is a net negative for humanity.

Why is there existence a net negative for humanity?

Same reason as tobacco companies.
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