What a weird comment. Why bring this up unless you're just trying to make them look bad in a dishonest way? It is clearly documented on the site in multiple places.
Moreover, they actively dissuade people from even buying the pro license because they are quite emphatic that most people/sites do not need any of these features. If you do need them, then it's a small price to pay for the functionality, as well as to make a modest amount to cover costs for their non-profit org. God forbid someone optionally charge something for years of effort that they have given away for free...
It also comes with an immensely useful "Inspector" that shows all the signals, sse events etc, and will soon come with an immensely streamlined web component framework (Rocket) and css framework (Stellar).
I bought the pro license mostly just to support them, but the inspector is great and I look forward to checking out rocket and stellar.
I opened my HN client and saw multiple posts at the top of the home page about this datastar thing, with comments like yours either very aggressively defending it or praising it as the best thing since bread.
Did you forget one of those "full disclosure" thingies at the top of your comment?
In any case, I didn't see anything interesting about it, even less so after reading OP's useful comment on the pricing, but even if I did I would never intentionally use or give money to a company that does astroturfing campaigns.
Full disclosure: I'm a happy and grateful user and purchaser of the datastar pro license.
And it's not a company, it's literally 3 guys who have a 501c3 non profit, and actively dissuade people from buying the pro license because YAGNI.
This is an example of the entitled subset of people who come out of the woodwork whenever an open source project has any kind of monetization or even just a non-standard license prohibiting billion dollar companies from selling their project as a service.
I guarantee the fact that I referred to a project with an anti Amazon clause as open source will piss some of the off so much that they’ll comment here about it.
Same people who complain about GPL and other copy left licenses I imagine.
op: copies information from the website
you: "How dare you!!!!!"
There's a such thing as context and intent which are separate from content, and this is directed as much at the people who upvoted this particular content to the top comment as it is to the OP.
The conversation on this post is now centered around the fact that they have some premium features for sale.
Edit: Now there’s another post on the front page of HN accusing the datastar team of being greedy.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45537372
> The conversation on this post is now centered around the fact that they have some premium features for sale.
Oh the horror!!!!!!
The open core model is great and entitled buttholes, and open source warriors discouraging people from doing that is pretty horrible.
I mean it’s not war in Ukraine horrible but I think it’s awful that people expect you to work for them for free.
Posting documentation from the site != "people expect you to work for them for free."
Really an insane thing to see a comment that informs you of pricing for their pro package and have a horde of people jump in with "How dare you!!!?!?!"
I appreciated it. If I'm going to consider a framework I want to know if some of it costs money. Especially like 299usd.
Frankly your response seems very hostile and makes me wants to avoid them more.
How much do you pay big tech for your LLM subscriptions monthly? I'm really curious.
299$ lifetime which includes future features seems like a steal. I bought it and don't use it, but I'm excited to see what comes next.
You live in a bubble. 299 is a crazy amount of money for me. I am currently debating whether to pay for copilot at 20/mo or keep using the free version.
Even if I was paying for that, there's no comparison between AI and a web framework that has many free competitors.
You don't need to pay for datastar. As I've said befor I don't use any of the pro plugins (plugins anyone can build themselves for that matter).
Sad to see developers getting ripped off by AI. Copilot is junk. The whole AI bubble is just a tax powered by fear of missing out. Save yourself 20$ a month, learn to touch type, use snippets and download a local copy of the docs.
Just because something is overhyped doesn't mean it can't be useful. You can literally try it for free with vscode and figure out quickly where it saves you time and where it doesn't. I made a value judgement that it saves me more than 20usd of time. If it didn't I wouldn't pay for it. Developers are not idiots motivated by fomo.
Using it for vibe coding where you pay for every token - and end up paying hundreds over dozens of iterations, when it would have been easier to write it yourself - is probably closer to what you're talking about. That's a totally different use case.
If you're using vscode your going to experience one of the biggest rug pulls in history (even more so if you're using copilot). I mean wasn't copilot free until recently?
Developers are idiots (I include myself in that). The industry is myopic and completely driven by fashion.
It used to cost money, it's now free but it's quite limited. I'm sure it'll get more expensive later, but it is great value at the moment.
Not sure how you can rug pull an open source project...
What a world we're living in - I point out that a hostile comment is hostile, and I'm labeled hostile.
Once again, they aren't charging anything. Pay them if you want some largely-unnecessary features, or if you just want to support years of hard work and innovation. That's what I did.
But you do you.
If you're amenable to feedback, the impression I got from your initial comment was "a hostile comment pointing out another hostile comment". It assumed a negative motivation on OOP based on vibes and you ran with it. Even this comment's parting line:
> But you do you.
- seems like a truism. I get the feeling it's meant to be read as "I give up. You can keep whatever wrong viewpoint you have".
Finally a good-faith reply!
I concede that my original comment here was somewhat hostile, but only really the first line. And it wasn't even all that hostile - especially when the rest of the comment was really just informative and positive about datastar.
And, moreover, is standing up to poor behaviour - even if done in a somewhat hostile/confrontational way - really such a bad thing? It seems quite clear to me that they were not communicating in good faith - they didnt come to discuss features, philosophy about open source sustainability, or actual reality of the messaging on the site and their discord server.
Instead THEY are explicitly saying that Datastar's devs are being dishonest in some way for having a pro license (which, again, they quite clearly say most people should not buy) as a way to bring a modicum of sustainability to something that theyve dedicated years to and given 99% of the value away for free.
They could have said "This looks interesting, but I noticed that there's a pro license if you want to get some features. Are these features necessary? Is this price reasonable? Should we be against there being a 501c3 behind this? etc..."
But they did none of that. I think that all that a reasonable person can really conclude is that they're either the disdainful sort of person who thinks all code should be free for everyone, or that they are just trolling, or perhaps even that they dont like how datastar is challenging the status quo of webdev.
Hence, "you do you" - you interpreted it exactly as I intended.
I'm sorry people didn't immediately take to this financing model as well as you did. The average person is not as invested as you and most people are going to immediately switch off if they hear part of the functionality costs money and this isn't mentioned anywhere on the front page. Doesn't matter how "unnecessary" these features are, it's a bad look.
Plenty of other open source projects make money without attracting this kind of negative feedback. It's curious to me that you suggest everyone is intentionally being negative or malicious here, instead of looking at why the project caused such a response.
People pay for things all the time, why not (almost surely unnecessary) code? Why do you all feel entitled to free access to thousands of hours of very highly skilled devs' efforts (most of which they actually are giving away for free)?
Moreover, it is quite common for there to be pro versions of libraries these days - tailwind, all sorts of component libraries, etc..
> Plenty of other open source projects make money without attracting this kind of negative feedback
We dont seem to be living in the same reality. In mine, maintaining open source projects is a nearly-completely thankless, profit-less endeavour. It is a rare exception that someone can earn a living from it. And datastar's devs have zero expectation that they'll do so, even with this model - hence it is registered as a 501c3, and the funds will cover things like travelling to conferences to talk about it.
I think the pro version and charging stuff is totally fine. It's the lack of transparency that bothers people. I shouldn't have to figure out their profit model from HN comments. If you want to be paid for your work, charge for the whole library or make the free/pro distinction very clear to people. Don't try to hook them in with a free offering while locking features behind a paywall that they discover later.
Or if you want to be altruistic (as you keep referring to nonprofit) make it free and solicit donations/patreon.
The current approach is certainly a new one and I am interested to see if it pays off.
99% is already free. That seems pretty altruistic to me.
And they don't really care if it "pays off" - it's not meant to
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Didn't find anything about this on the main page.
Author of Datastar here. Most people don't need pro and it seems like putting it on the front page is actually marketing it instead of people finding it as the need the features. Not only should most people not use the features we actively push against it. The only thing that's really super valuable is the inspector which is a Dev tool
As someone who actually happily bought Pro, I completely agree with this. Inspector is great, and worth the (nominal) cost of Pro. I might use a couple other of the pro functions. I'm very much looking forward to Stellar CSS and Rocket Web component framework getting released - they'll DEFINITELY make pro worthwhile, and given that they are completely new, there should be no qualms about it being purely pro.
> It is clearly documented on the site in multiple places.
Hold up, so then why is pasting THEIR documentation into a comment weird?
lol. This is an absolutely insane response to someone simply informing the commentors that there is a price involved in the pro package.
because the implication in this and so many other comments is that they're dishonestly hiding something. There was no other commentary other than a large and prominent comment saying "Watch the fuck out everyone! There be $ hidden in there!"
All they did was post the price of the pro package!!!