i'm afraid this is rather the quality of a non native writer, sorry we are not all from the mother US of A

I'm not referring to the language barrier - I live in a place where I write and speak at a juvenile level. I'm referring to the very low quality of thinking on display in the article, and in this reply (english is not from the US of A. And, moreover, the level of literacy in that country is nothing to envy)

Here's a HN post from today for a coherent article about the same topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45536000

It gets worse.

I payed the one off 299$ for a pro license but have yet to find a reason to use any of the pro features.

I was hoping to need them for the google sheets clone [1] I was building but I seem to be able to do it without PRO features.

- [1] https://cells.andersmurphy.com/

I don't understand. Why is it a problem with Datastar if you buy their Pro license without needing it?

The comment is tongue in cheek. On the discord it was discussed at length and some of the plugins in the Pro version were actually considered anti-patterns, it actually is kinda easy to complicate things needlessly when getting used to D* and I know I did this too in the beginning.

As was said by the commenter in another reply, the inspector is actually the bit that makes the Pro version much more appealing but most people wouldn't know from the sidelines.

Arguably that's good though - for the project. It means it's not a bait and switch like many have claimed. You can build pretty much anything with regular Datastar.

Could not tell if sarcasm or not. This seems awesome to me. You are using a piece of software and supporting it.

Sorry, yes it was sarcasm (I should have indicated that explicitly). I'm happy to fund a tool that I really enjoy using, even if I don't use any of the PRO features.

I, also, was swindled by those cultists.

I thought the devs' emphatic assertions in their Discord NOT to buy Datastar Pro was a psyop dark pattern. I bought it to spite them, and barely use any of it. I want my css-in-js back!

he is out of line but he is right

Odd statement from a doctor using this at his practice:

"It is not like $299 is much for me, but I am just a hobbist."

It's one of the worst blog post I've ever read.

They kind of have a point but everything around it is ridiculous.

Yeah man. He’s a just a hobbit. But, aren’t we all just hobbits really?

Finally someone is speaking truth to power. These registered non-profits that release their code for free and their leisure time for support need to be knocked down a notch.

We all know they are evil. But you know the most evil thing? That code that was previously released under a free license? Still sneakily on display in the git history like the crown jewels in the Tower of London. Except of armed guard defending the code that wants to be free once more it's hidden behind arcane git commands. Name me a single person that knows how to navigate the git history. I'm waiting. Spoiler alert: I asked Claude and they don't exist.

As I read it the op said, "I don't like how they changed this license, this is a bad direction and I didn't think there was adequate transparency."

And your rebuttal is, "Well you can always recover the code from the git history?"

I mean, this is true, but do you think this really addresses the spirit of the post's complaint? Does mentioning they're a non-profit change anything about the complaint?

The leadership and future of a software project is an important component in its use professionally. If someone believes that the project's leadership is acting in an unfair or unpredictable way then it's rational and prudent for them to first express displeasure, then disassociate with the project if they continue this course. But you've decided to write a post that suggests the poster is being irrational, unfair, and that they want the project to fail when clearly they don't.

If you'd like to critique the post's points, I suggest you do so rather than straw manning and well-poisoning. This post may look good to friends of the project, but to me as someone with only a passing familiarity with what's going on? It looks awful.

[flagged]

I love everything about this answer

Oh I did. I got rid of it. Inspiring both constant censure and the kind of response you're giving drove me to despair.

I don't write things for public consumption now.

But we're not talking about me or the post. We're talking about your refusal to engage with the implications of what the project did.

I don't care what Datastar does. I'd never use Datastar. Looks like exactly what I don't need. They can certainly govern their product as they see fit.

But I've disassociated from projects for less egregious unannounced terms changes. And I've never had that decision come out for the worst, only neutral or better.

Good luck with your future endeavors, I guess.

Sure, but this person is a doctor (or similar) who took time to learn to code this form up to better serve their patients. They are most likely blessedly ignorant of software licenses and version control.

1. Open LICENSE on GitHub

2. Click on the commit ID

3. You’ll see something like “1 parent: fdsfgsd” – click through to that commit

4. Browse

I mean, it’s a shitty move for sure, but eh.

(Parent was being sarcastic)

Huh! I’m getting rusty.

Yes, much power! Datastar is the worst, how dare they?

Datastar's ideas look wonderful, and I've thought of adopting it myself, but hobbling the open source version to not compete with pro this early on sounds like a fast ticket to a hard fork. It's not like they command a vast ecosystem that would be reluctant to switch.

[edit: Seems like the model with an open core and some closed plugins could work out fine. If not, everyone's got options. Wishing success for both the D* developers and the users.]

> sounds like a fast ticket to a hard fork.

Indeed! Could you do us all a favour and fork the pre-pro plugins and make them compatible with the current iteration of d* pro? They're all like 50 LOC, after all, so should be simple.

Were I so inclined, I'd make them compatible with non-pro. And more likely just take my fork in whatever direction I cared to, just keeping the wire format compatible (and likely negotiable). But it's a project best left for people actually using Datastar, not curious onlookers like me.

Given the simplicity of doing such a fork, and that no one has done it yet, perhaps this is a non-issue?

Same as my other comment, it seems like you are involved in the project. Stop responding like this is facebook or reddit. Here we offer our expertise with all good intentions. They haven't said it is a simple task, you are assuming that they said that.

If you can't take constructive criticism or even respond to opinions you disagree, then it is better to not respond at all, because it is bad PR.

I understand that maintaining a project like this is hard, that you need to be compensated and that open source corporate usage tends to be disgraceful. But that's not what they are telling you. They are just shating their opinion, which is part of your potential customer opinions.

Share the rationale behind paywalling common features. Give us, if you have to respond, why you hide the pro features off the homepage, etc. Instead of this kind of childish reaction that adds nothing

I'm a user of datastar, nothing more. And I'm defending the developers against all of the baseless slander here.

And now Im forced to defend myself against your baseless slander. If you cared to read, you'd see that I said it was a simple task to update the pre-pro versions of the tiny plugins to be compatible with the current api, because it would be. And they replied on that basis.

The rationale has been shared many times - here and elsewhere. And the pro features are not "hidden" - they're right there in the header. And it's not for any nefarious reason - precisely the opposite, in fact. They don't want to appear to be flogging something. Similarly, they don't advertise any of the pro features as being free, anywhere.

But, I brought this all up with the devs earlier and suggested they add a small link or banner or something to the pro license and they said they would. But not because it's a good or necessary idea, but instead just so all the trolls won't have even the wobbliest leg to stand on in the future on this topic.

Please take some constructive criticism - you have no idea what you're talking about here, in any regard. It is childish. Please inform yourself in the future, especially when you want to try to correct someone.

"Hobbling" is too strong a word. There's a handful of attributes and events that are only available in Pro and none look fundamental to the operation of most sites [1]. In fact they could all probably be replaced with a bit of custom JS sent up from the server.

[1] https://data-star.dev/reference/datastar_pro

Please do! I highly recommend doing that, PLEASE FORK

I have already seen a few of your responses to criticism coming up toxic like this. They don't need to fork it, but some of your potential customers could. They are explaining to you their opinions, and in HN, this is very valuable.

Most of us have some decision at companies, which are your real customers, and criticism like I've seen you respond boldly and badly, is the criticism I think you should review and take into account.

Personally, I like everything of the pro, except the features that you decided to exclude. Doesn't seem pro features, but features you ramdomly decided not to open source them, and that could be ok. But instead of doing it like this, maybe put a restrictive license so that companies with more than 5 people have to pay.

But I think you should focus on premium/pro features that are really a plus, like your debugger, the bundler, etc. And find features that aren't common and give a plus.

And it is an opinion which you may disagree with, but if you respond to me, don't do it like that, because to me, it is not professional and I'll tend to avoid doing business with people that respond like that

I don't get why people get so worked up over Datastar's pro tier - you almost certainly don't need it.

yeah, but i WANT it

The inspector is great, but it's too much work to swap out the free bundle for the pro bundle every time I want to use it.

I'm only working in local dev right now, so i've got the pro version and inspector going. When I get to prod, perhaps this will be a problem.

Yet, surely, this could just be toggled with an env var or db setting or something? if dev, include pro and inspector component. If prod, use free version (or custom bundle that only has what you need)

Yeah probably just haven't got round to it and don't use enough signals.

That's how people tick. We aren't satisfied with what we have if there is more. Doesn't matter if we need it.

Because the incentive is now there. Maybe they don't get enough paid customers and want more money. This puts a bit of pressure to move a new feature that is really handy into the paid level. Then another and another. Might not happen but it could.

Most people using Datastar will not necessarily be smart enough to fork it and add their own changes. And when Datastar makes a new release of the base/free code people will want to keep up to date. That means individuals have to figure out how to integrate their already done changes into the new code and keep that going. It's not a matter of if something breaks your custom code but when.

Finally, many people internalize time as money with projects like this. They're spending many hours learning to use the framework. They don't want to have the effort made useless when something (ex: costs or features) changes outside of their control. Their time learning to use the code is what they "paid" for the software. Doesn't matter if it's rational to you if it is to them.

Datastar always rubbed me the wrong way. The author was constantly pushing it in the HTMX discord, telling anyone who would listen that if they liked HTMX how great Datastar would be for them. Some pretty classy comments from them on reddit too:

> It was a full rewrite. Use the beta release forever if it has all the tools you need. No one is stopping you.

> Open source doesn't owe you anything and I expect the same back.

> The author was constantly pushing it in the HTMX discord, telling anyone who would listen that if they liked HTMX how great Datastar would be for them

You know who else does that? THE DEVELOPER OF HTMX! https://htmx.org/essays/alternatives/

> Some pretty classy comments from them on reddit too:

What is unclassy about those comments? Seem sensible to me...

Agree nothing unclassy. People have this strange expectation that an open source project is out there to serve every single person using it with total attention. It’s not, feel free to fork the beta and use it forever, make your own changes. The pro tier cost is a pittance for anyone using it for profit.

Going to vouch for this. Why does it matter what other people do? This is such a non issue, you are free to fork it and do your own work. I actually believe more open source repos should tastefully have paid tiers to help pay for the continued work.

HTMX doesnt do half of what datastar does. And datastar's free version does 99% of what the pro version does

And react should be paying people to take on its immense performance and maintenance burden

React is literally maintained by a consortium of the world's biggest companies and before this Facebook/Meta. This is a ridiculous thing to say.

I feel like you can push your own thing in your own discord…

Something about riding the hype train for a fully open and free library you did not create to push your product just feels strange to me.

there is (or at least was) literally a dedicated Datastar channel in the htmx discord...

Which has since been archived. Last post from “Datastar CEO”. I mean cmon, it’s a little cringe. That meme is funny when it’s about HTMX. Like at least try your own memes instead of riding on Carson’s sense of humor too.

I dont disagree. I wouldn't dare try to follow in Carson's shitposting/memeing footsteps - that's a line far too fine for me to walk.

well Datastar started as an attempt to make HTMX an framework instead of just a library. It was part of the HTMX discord for years

I had a running service written in htmx for some time. It is a clinic opening hour service to inform my patients when I will be available in which clinic. (Yes, I am not a programmer, but a healthcare professional.)

-> that was pretty freaking cool to read, loved it

also chuckled at the idea of my website making, health professional going all "What the fuck." in front of his codebase.

If the developer rug pulled once they will probably do it again. Thx for the heads up.

what was taken from you? point to the source history that's been removed please. It's funny that stuff like this means people won't ever develop in the open. Hope that makes y'all happy

I just come from writing a comment on the other Datastar post on the home page, literally saying that I don't see the point of it and that I don't like it.

But I'm now here to defend Datastar.

It's their code, which, up to now, they built and literally given away totally for free, under a MIT license. Everything (even what "they moved to the Pro tier") should still be free and under the MIT license that it was published under originally.

You just decided to rely and freeload (as, as far as I can tell, you never contributed to the project).

You decided to rely on a random third party that owns the framework. And now you're outraged because they've decided that from now on, future work will be paid.

You know the three magic words:

Just. Fork. It.

Calling the OP a freeloader is over the top.

The software was released as a free version, with NO expectation for it to go commercial.

The fact that they switch to a paid version, and stripping out features from the original free version, is called "bait and switch".

If OP knew in advanced, he will have been informed about this and the potential 299 price tag. And he will have been able to make a informed decision BEFORE integrating the code.

> You just decided to rely and freeload (as, as far as I can tell, you never contributed to the project).

But you complaint about him being a freeloader for not contributing to a project. What a ridiculous response.

I feel like you never even read the post and are making assumption that OP is a full time programmer.

Datastar can do whatever they want, its their code. But calling out a *bait and switch* does not make OP the bad guy.

Yeah, I agree, it's over the top. I'm just matching the over-the-top language of the original post, which pretty much calls the Datastar devs "disgraceful" and to "f them".

I did read the post. I know OP not a programmer. And that makes it even worse: OP has the audacity of saying they "make no money from the project" while it being a scheduling tool for their presumably plenty money-making clinic.

It would in fact be less shocking if they were a programmer doing a side project for fun.

This piece is not a rational, well tempered article. Is a rant by someone who just took something that was free and is now outraged and saying fuck you to those who made their project possible in the first place, not even understanding how licenses work or even being aware that the code they relied on is still there, on github, fully intact, and available for them.

This sort of people not only want to get it for free. They want their code to be maintained and improved for free in perpetuity.

They deserve to be called freeloaders.

The license makes it very clear that “no expectations” goes all round, including the right to other people doing free maintenance for you.

its not bait and switch, its main has features we are willing to continue to support given we did a whole rewrite and this is what we think you should use. Don't like it? Fork it, code is still there. I hope your version is better!

> its not bait and switch, its main has features we are willing to continue to support given we did a whole rewrite and this is what we think you should use. Don't like it? Fork it, code is still there. I hope your version is better!

It sounds like your are the dev of Datastar...

Let me give one piece of advice. Drop the attitude because this is not how you interact in public as the developers of a paid piece of software.

You can get away with a lot when its free/hobby project, but the moment you request payment, there is a requirement for more professionalism. These reactions that i am reading, will trigger responses that will hurt your future paycheck. Your already off on a bad start with this "bait and switch", do not make it worse.

I really question your future client interactions, if they criticize your product(s) or practices.

> I hope your version is better!

No need for Datastar, my HTMX "alternative" has been in production (with different rewrites) over 20 years. So thank you for offering, but no need.

>Drop the attitude

I have to be honest, I dont see what's wrong with it.

They were accused of bait and switch, which is not even half true. Old Pro code is still available under MIT. Newer version charges more. That is it.

I'll certainly defend d*'s right to do what they did, but the wisdom of doing so is going to come into question as soon as they reject a PR because it contains a feature that's in Pro. I don't think people who are concerned about that deserve to be called "freeloaders", but I guess a fork is a way out of such acidic rhetoric too.

D* has a core, which is open and will be set in stone soon when v1 is released, with the expectation that it'll barely, if ever, change again.

The rest is plugins, which anyone can write or modify. There's no need for the plugins to get merged upstream - just use them in your project, and share them publicly if you want. You could even do the same with the pre-pro versions of the pro plugins - just make the (likely minor) modifications to make them compatible with the current datastar core.

They're also going to be releasing a formal public plugin api in the next release. Presumably it'll be even easier to do all of this then.

Sounds like they put some real thought into it then, which is good news. I was picturing two different core distributions, which would create the sort of conflict I was imagining, but as long as core does stay maintained, it seems likely that fear will stay imaginary.

one might say they've put far too much thought into it all. Its very impressive

FUD is all hackernews runs on apparently

As I answered somewhere else, the over-the-top freeloader term I think is justified because OP clearly expects not only to benefit from the work already available, freely, but also to be entitled, for free, to any work and improvement that comes in the future.

This is nonsensical. Someone did something for free. Fantastic. They used it, successfully, for a production system that enables scheduling for their job.

Nobody took that away from them. They didn't force them to rebuild their tool.

The code is even there, in the git history, available for them.

If OP doesn't like what the devs decided to do with the project, just move on or fork and pay someone to help you fix any outstanding bugs or missing features.

There is a generation divide in open source ideology over the past 10 - 20 years.

The modern one is what op and lots of younger generation agree upon. It should always be open source and continue to be supported by the community.

The old folks are basically take it or leave it. Fork it into my own while taking the maintenance burden too.

Wait - what's wrong with that? It's their project, they can merge whatever PRs they want!

> Just. Fork. It.

The “outrage” is literally just people saying they’ll use a different project instead. Why would they ever fork it? They don’t like the devs of datastar they don’t want to use it going forwards. Yes the developers are allowed to do what they want with their code and time, but people are allowed to vote with their feet and go elsewhere and they are allowed to be vocal about it.

I was looking for a tool to follow along with signal patches and was a bit disappointed to see the inspector is under "pro"- that and the query string sync are the two nice-to-haves.

so you want nothing to be useful in Pro? you are telling devs how to spend their time and effort?

I tried to understand this, but it seems like a non-native English speaker met an LLM and used it to create a blog post. Can someone please explain why this exists?

cause people hate how you give your own gifts to the world of open source. fuck 'em

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vagyIcmIGOQ&t=20017s

DHH is spot on like he is on many issues!

There is a saying in my language which translates: give someone a hand and they'll take your whole arm.

Sorry for that. I am really a non-native English speaker. I did not use LLM, just bad English.

> But the one that most inspired me was a web app that displayed data from every radar station in the United States.

Anyone have a link for this?

Having so many features behind a Pro gate makes this a non-starter for enterprise. How would anyone convince their company to adopt this?

People can develop open source equivalents you know, you're not required to use the pro version to get a certain feature. From my understanding, datastar was designed to be entirely modular and extensible.

EXACTLY which feature do you need?

Is the greedy developer in the title the one who wants the 3rd party for free without contributing, or the developer who wrote the said 3rd party and asking compensation?

I am confused.

The problem is that the developer of datastar did a bait and switch. Releasing the beta for free, and then removing features into a pro version with a price tag.

Nothing wrong with people making money on their software but you need to make it clear from the start, that it will be paid software and what price range.

Bait and switch is often used to get people to use your software, you spend time into it, and then if you need a Pro feature, well, fork up or rework your code again. So your paying with your time or money. This is why its nasty and gets people riled up.

Its amazing how many people are defending this behavior.

Correct me if I am wrong here, but what you had for free, you still have it for free, since it's a MIT license, what you cloned initially is still "yours".

Is the problem thar one needs to fork / maintain the code from now on? Is the problem that one wants free support on top of the free library?

MIT, source is still there, look at the tags and fork it. You have the same rites as me!

Take a chill pill sudodevnull ... As i stated before, turn down the rhetoric. Your not helping yourself with these "!" reactions.

You keep accusing me of something that's a lie. Rhetoric indeed

> But no, the datastar dev somehow move a portion of the freely available features behind a paywall. What the fuck.

Bait & Switch. They're in their right to do it, but it's a bad move, and nobody should use their project^M^M^M^Mduct anymore.

and youre in your right to fork the pre-pro versions of the now-pro plugins, update them to be compatible with the current version of the open-source course (a surely trivial task) and share them with the world. You can call your plugin pack d-free

I'd rather not get spammed by Bait&Switch projects that turn into products, thank you.

that's just not true, the current ones are a complete rewrite. Use the old way to your heart's content. It's MIT

Yeah cool, I think this is the point. People want to get paid for the work they produce and the dynamic in open source is not even quietly known to be unsustainable.

I like the communal aspect of open source, but I don’t like overly demanding and entitled free loaders. I’ve had enough of that in my well paid career over the last decade.

This way of getting paid may or may not resonate, but I applaud the attempt to make it work.

A lot of PRO plugins can be self developed. An example: there is a poor-man's inspector plugin at [1].

The replace-url thing should be a simple JS code using history API no?

[1] https://github.com/sudeep9/datastar-plugins?tab=readme-ov-fi...

Since this post was originally linked from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45536535, that seems like a natural place to merge most of the comments.

Generally, on HN it's better not to post a follow-up link like this because it leads to duplicate/split discussions. It's better to continue the conversation at relevant points in the original thread.