toebert

I think 75% is apt here, tailwind is incredibly popular and most people wouldn’t know how many engineers they have. If it said “tailwind let 3 people go” I bet most (including me) would assume alright… tailwinds big they may have 30-50 people around… 3 is not too bad right?

I also disagree with this being entirely bullshit, I think he is right that the impact of AI has made the situation worse for him by impacting his most valuable sales funnel (their own documentation pages). But separately, it is a very populated space (UI libraries) with multiple options to compete with, some of which are rather well established and free - so it was an uphill battle to begin with.

“Traffic to our docs is down about 40% from early 2023 despite Tailwind being more popular than ever,” he added. He then goes on to explain that “The docs are the only way people find out about our commercial products, and without customers we can’t afford to maintain the framework.”

People no longer need to look at their docs or their website because they ask AI how to do something with tailwind instead, so they no longer get to expose and advertise their product (tailwind plus).

Tailwind plus is a one time payment, not a subscription. If there are no new customers to buy it, their income is gone.

His point seems to be rather that he has been using a monetisation approach to his work where he released his work open source and then used the exposure of it to sell his services, which is now being taken away because LLMs hide him from the equation and all the person sees on the other side is “ai solved it for me”. That sounds to me more like a business model that leverages open source, which he is now considering changing and charging everyone instead because his previous one is being made impossible. It doesn’t sound like he is doing this as a hobby, but as a job. It’s not different than being a self employed photographer, writer etc - all the other professions which are revolting against AI for the exact same reason.

To your metaphor, it’s more akin to someone going around the street and recording the best songs of every musician there and then putting it on YouTube with a label of “don’t bother going to this place, here’s the music you wanted”. Not only do they not get money directly, nor are they getting any credit or royalty but it even removes the chance of them getting anything out of it, even if it’s just exposure to further their career.

I’m pretty sure few people will bask for 6-8 hours a day every day as a hobby without hoping to get something for it.

To your last point…Isn’t the definition of charity pretty much along the lines of offering services or resources to others without the expectation of profit? I get your point if it applies to the “I wrote some code which works for me, you can have it as is, good luck” situation alone but that’s incredibly rare in open source projects with any popularity (i.e. real users) - a lot of time and effort goes into supporting people and doing things you wouldn’t do for yourself.

I don’t think it is selfish to expect to be compensated for your work - open source or otherwise - especially when you do start doing it for others (e.g. dealing with issues, reviewing prs, fixing and implementing things you wouldn’t just for yourself).

If you don’t expect it that’s great, but as he pointed out - that’s charity. No reason to expect that everyone will be in a position to do that indefinitely, especially when it comes to massive projects that turn into full time jobs.