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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

#611

Post by lifetimerubyist »

asattarmd wrote: post #265

> And every second I spend trying to do fun free things for the community like this is a second I'm not spending trying to turn the business around and make sure the people who are still here are getting their paychecks every month. Then step aside as the maintainer of the project then and better yet, make something like Tailwind-foundation etc. which is truly open source. Go spend your time building your business, b…

He gives a gift to the world and you’re telling him to just give it up because somebody did work nobody asked for and he doesn’t want it for his project

Get a grip.

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

#612

Post by fantasizr »

mmcnl wrote: post #473
agentifysh wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this whole "ai is theft" argument is just pure cope. tailwind was always just a thin abstraction over css standards and they only became the industry standard by playing the seo game and dumping docs on the open web for everyone to see. you dont get to claim theft when a model actually learns the patterns you basically forced onto the world for free to build your brand. tailwinds business model was essentially rent s…

It doesn't matter what Tailwind your opinion is. It matters that they built something which definitely has market validation that people were willing to pay for. AI took their lunch AND their lunch money.

the ai companies are presented as just 'existing', when in fact there is money being made it's just be routed to them.

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

#613

Post by jandy »

jesse_dot_id wrote: post #157
sosodev wrote: 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…

I think you can see this when you look at the downvotes on that GitHub issue on any comment which suggests gating AI access behind a paywall.

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

#614

Post by fc417fc802 »

port11 wrote: post #440
freedomben wrote: post #6

Very sad to hear, I bought Tailwind UI years ago and although it was a lot more expensive than I wanted, I've appreciated the care and precision and highly recommend buying it (It's now called Tailwind Plus) even still (maybe even especially now). Mad props to Adam for his honesty and transparency. Adam if you're reading, just know that the voices criticizing you are not the only voices out there. Thanks for all you'…

I could never afford Tailwind UI but then again I don’t really use Tailwind. That said, as an open-source styling solution, they could be supported in other ways. A lot — and I really mean a lot — of websites are built with Tailwind, yet very few consider donating or buying what they have to offer. Plenty of F/LOSS is in the same state: businesses extract all value they can from open-source, but put back nothing. Tha…

> businesses extract all value they can from open-source, but put back nothing

This has always been the case. Sometimes they give back by opening one or more of their components. Other times they don't. I don't see it as a problem. It doesn't usually detract from what's already published.

In cases where it would detract, simply use an appropriate license to curb the behavior.

> LLMs are just accelerating this trend.

LLMs might not prove sufficiently capable to meaningfully impact this dynamic.

Alternatively, if they achieve that level then I think they will accomplish the long stated goal of FOSS by enabling anyone to translate constraints from natural language into code. If I could simply list off behaviors of existing software and get a reliable reproduction I think that would largely obsolete worrying about software licenses.

I realize we're nowhere near that point yet, and also that reality is more complex than I'm accounting for there. But my point is that I figure either LLMs disrupt the status quo and we see benefits from it or alternatively that business as usual continues with some shiny new tools.

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

#615

Post by hitekker »

lloydatkinson wrote: post #478
zeusly wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Did you really go looking over years of their post history for this retort?

GP could have remembered simlevesque's past posts and then just double-checked.

The hypocrisy the GP noticed is strong enough to warrant a mention.

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

#616

Post by odie5533 »

Jcampuzano2 wrote: post #522
falloutx wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you know it recreated perfectly. Is it equally customizable? Is it equally accessible? And your LLM models cost money too. If you use the API keys, you can quickly see the cost.

Being 100% honest even though it sucks to be the truth - it doesn't matter if its customizable or accessible or not because you just ask the LLM to do that for you. Or ask the LLM to customize it to your specific use case since most people really only really care about their situation - not for it to be customizable to everyones use case.

Even with AI, I'd still use a component library. It reduces the surface area you have to maintain and keeps your look consistent. The same reasons to use them before AI.

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

#617

Post by _qswe »

mmcnl wrote: post #473
agentifysh wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this whole "ai is theft" argument is just pure cope. tailwind was always just a thin abstraction over css standards and they only became the industry standard by playing the seo game and dumping docs on the open web for everyone to see. you dont get to claim theft when a model actually learns the patterns you basically forced onto the world for free to build your brand. tailwinds business model was essentially rent s…

It doesn't matter what Tailwind your opinion is. It matters that they built something which definitely has market validation that people were willing to pay for. AI took their lunch AND their lunch money.

I'm not going to dogpile criticism on Tailwind or Adam, whose behavior seems quite admirable, but I fundamentally agree with the thrust of the parent comment. It's unfortunate for Tailwind and anyone who was invested in the project's pre-2022 trajectory, but no one is entitled to commercial engagement by unaffiliated third parties.

Here's a similar example from my own experience:

* Last week, I used AI to help me prepare a set of legal agreements that would have easily cost $5k+ in legal fees pre-2022.

* I've also started a personal blog and created a privacy policy and ToS that I might otherwise have paid lawyers money to draft. Or more realistically, I'd have cut those particular corners and accepted the costs of slightly higher legal risk and reduced transparency.

* In total, I've saved into the five figures on legal over the past few years by preparing docs myself and getting only a final sign-off from counsel as needed.

One perspective would be that AI is stealing money from lawyers. My perspective is that it's saving me time, money, and risk, and therefore allowing me to allocate my scarce resources far more efficiently.

Automation inherently takes work away from humans. That's the purpose of automation. It doesn't mean automation is bad; it means we have a new opportunity to apply our collective talents toward increasingly valuable endeavors. If the market ultimately decides that it doesn't have sufficient need for continued Tailwind maintenance to fund it, all that means is that humanity believes Adam and co. will provide more value by letting it go and spending their time differently.

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

#618

Post by marcus_holmes »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #270
risyachka wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What most don’t realize is that this will happen to most businesses in all categories as more people rely on ChatGPT and Claude for discovery. No discovery - no business. And same with ads.if OpenAI decides not to add ads - prepare for even faster business consolidation. Those businesses preferred by llms will exponentially grow, others will quickly go out of business

Underscoring the parent comment and adding to it: watching technologists on a site called Hacker News cheer on the centralization of power is really something.

I think this phase of centralising power is part of the never-ending cycle of centralisation and distribution - mainframes -> PCs -> websites -> apps, and so on round we go. We will get a "data centres -> Personal LLMs" phase of the cycle which distributes it again.

So my hope is that LLMs become local in a few years.

We've been sitting around 16Gb of RAM on a laptop for 10-15 years now, not because RAM is too expensive or difficult to make, but because there's been no need for more than that for the average user. We could get "normal" laptop RAM up to 16Tb in a few years if there was commercial demand for it.

We have processor architectures that are suitable for running LLMS better/faster/efficiently. We could include those in a standard laptop if there was commercial demand for it.

Tokens are getting cheaper, dramatically, and will continue to do so. But we have an upper limit on LLM training complexity (we only have so much Internet data to train them on). Eventually the race between LLM complexity and processing speed will run out, and probably with processing speed as the winner.

So my hope is that our laptops change, that they include a personally-adapted very capable LLM, run locally, and that we start to see a huge variety of LLMs available. I guess the closest analogy would be the OS's from "Her"; less typing, more talking, and something that is personalised, appearing to actually know the user, and run locally (which is important).

I don't see anything stopping Linux from doing this too (but I'm not working in this area so I can't say for sure).

Obviously we'll face the usual data thieves and surveillance capitalism along the way, but that's part of the process.

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

#619

Post by monooso »

agentifysh wrote: post #365
mmcnl wrote: post #348

Wow, this is a grim reality check: AI hyperscalers taking in billions of revenue, while at the same time putting honest business like Tailwind out of work, without any form of compensation. What happened to "you wouldn't steal a car" etc.? It's only illegal if you're not a trillion dollar company? I have trouble expressing how terrible unjust it feels that AI companies are stealing money from the common people. I hav…

this whole "ai is theft" argument is just pure cope. tailwind was always just a thin abstraction over css standards and they only became the industry standard by playing the seo game and dumping docs on the open web for everyone to see. you dont get to claim theft when a model actually learns the patterns you basically forced onto the world for free to build your brand. tailwinds business model was essentially rent s…

You're clearly not a fan of Tailwind, and that's fair enough.

However, stating that Adam Wathan (AW) "basically forced [Tailwind] onto the world" is nonsense. People chose to adopt it because it solved a problem.

In case you're not familiar with the origins of Tailwind, AW was building a SaaS live on stream, and everyone kept asking about the little utility CSS framework he'd built for himself (rather than the short-lived SaaS).

That's how it all started. Not through a big SEO campaign, or the mysterious ability to force others to choose a CSS framework against their will, but because people saw it, and wanted to use it.

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

#620

Post by pdonis »

echelon wrote: post #264
ericmcer wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tools like Tailwind are one of the few cases where I totally believe it when the CEO says "we are cutting jobs because of AI". Sucks that anytime you ask AI to generate a site for you Tailwind will have an impact on that.

Anything open source will be turned against its authors and against ICs. We thought it would give us freedom, but all of the advantage will accrue to the hyperscalers. If we don't build open source infra that is owned by everyone, we'll be owned by industrial giants and left with a thin crust that is barely ours. (This seems like such a far-fetched "Kumbaya, My Lord" type of wishful thinking, that it's a joke that I'…

> owned by everyone

There's no such thing. Even if on paper "everyone" has an ownership share, in practice it's going to be a relatively small number of people who actually exercise all the functions of ownership. The idea that "everyone" can somehow collectively "own" anything is a pipe dream. Ownership in practice is control--whoever controls it owns it. "Everyone" can't control anything.

> I really like AI models, but I hate monopolies. Especially ones that treat us like cattle and depopulate the last vestiges of ownership and public commons.

I would dispute whether the tech giants are "monopolies", since there's still competition between them, but that's a minor point. I agree with you that they treat individual coders like cattle--but that's because they can: because, from their standpoint, individual coders are commodities. And if automated tools, including AI models, are cheaper commodities that, from their standpoint, can do the same job, that's what they'll use. And if the end result is that whatever they're selling as end products becomes cheaper for the same functionality, then economically speaking, that's an improvement--we as coders might not like it, but we as customers are better off because things we want are cheaper.

So I'm not sure it's a consistent position to "really like AI models" but also not want the tech giants to treat you like cattle. The two things go together.

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