170: Open-Source Ethics and Monetization with Chris Coyier

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to Syntax. Welcome to a brand new episode of the Front End Happy Hour podcast. Welcome to this week’s JS Party. Live from Ship Shape Studios, this is Whiskey Web and Whatnot. With your hosts, Robbie the Wagner, and me, Charles William Carpenter III. That’s right Charles. We drink whiskey and talk about web development.

[00:00:27] Intro: I mean, it’s all in the name. It’s not that deep. This is Whiskey Web and Whatnot. Do not adjust your set.

[00:00:36] Robbie Wagner: Hey, what’s up? This is wine, web and whatnot. ‘cause we couldn’t do whiskey because of logistical issues.

[00:00:42] Robbie Wagner: Yes. And we’re not gonna go through the whole pronunciate nu just say what the wine is. Okay. I can’t say words right now. Uh, bru de uh, it’s in Anta 2018. It’s A-D-O-C-G, which means organic, , which is good in Italy, bad in America. I think that’s [00:01:00] about where we’re at, right? Yes. That’s, that sounds right.

[00:01:02] Robbie Wagner: Now. I’m wondering if I put the SD card into this son of bitch. Sorry. You guys talk amongst yourselves. I’ll be right back for a moment.

[00:01:10] Chris Coyier: Wouldn’t it say how?

[00:01:12] Robbie Wagner: No, I would think it would, but yeah, recording to nothing I guess. So, well maybe there’s like one

[00:01:17] Chris Coyier: megabyte of on onboard storage.

[00:01:20] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. And that that’s all you get.

[00:01:22] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I don’t know. Yeah, because you can actually Oh, so we’ll toss you guys. This is my first time podcast. Exactly. We’ll speak briefly about the road caster Crow two, which, , all the road caster ones with the sound effect buttons allowed you actually a add your own sound effects on there. They give you things like crowd noise and stuff by default.

[00:01:40] Robbie Wagner: I see. But you can like put your, now you’re using to replace them

[00:01:44] Chris Coyier: with your own custom farts if you’d like. Yeah. My own custom farts,

[00:01:48] Robbie Wagner: I actually only put farts on this board, so we’ll see if we’re gonna use that or not. But

[00:01:52] Chris Coyier: it’s a beautiful piece of equipment. , yeah. I’m joining these boys at, at, at wine web and whatnot here at All.

[00:01:58] Chris Coyier: Things Open. [00:02:00] I think you’ll hear some crowd noise behind us. Yes. Even though it’s actually a little slow right now at the thing ‘cause it’s lunch, but you can still hear the. You know? Yeah. I mean a lot of people out

[00:02:08] Robbie Wagner: like kind of in the main hallway and it looks like a ton of people are lining up for lunch and of course that’s all echoing out and ela, here we are.

[00:02:16] Robbie Wagner: So these aren’t sound effects from the road.

[00:02:18] Chris Coyier: Yeah, no, it’s, it’s very cool. And we’re sitting in front of us is this road podcaster board that they’re talking about’s beautiful. It looks like a video game or something or something. Eighties equipment. It’s really cool that when I see pictures of stuff like that online, like my mouse just hovers over the buy button despite me having a podcast as well at Chop Talk show, we just, it doesn’t come up.

[00:02:39] Chris Coyier: Come up. I am

[00:02:40] Robbie Wagner: going to send you a bunch of affiliate links, it sounds like. Yeah, I do kind of get it

[00:02:45] Chris Coyier: though that all the mics go into it. It records on the, the thing inside the board, which I like. And then we all, crucially we all get headphone jacks. Yes. That seems like

[00:02:53] Robbie Wagner: the most. That, yeah. It’s key to record to the SD card because twice while we were recording at my [00:03:00] house, Riverside just switched the input for the sound, so we were recording from the camera microphone

[00:03:06] Chris Coyier: and we drank a bunch of whiskey.

[00:03:07] Chris Coyier: I’ve seen that. Yeah. Any little weird network traffic and, and Riverside. Yeah. Freak out. It should

[00:03:12] Robbie Wagner: tell you that it’s gonna switch though, but it doesn’t. And so yeah, we drank a ton of whiskey. We, we were doing six of them, so we did three, and then we were like, wow, we’re pretty drunk. Let’s listen to it. Oh, didn’t work.

[00:03:22] Robbie Wagner: Let’s do another

[00:03:22] Chris Coyier: three.

[00:03:23] Robbie Wagner: But you

[00:03:23] Chris Coyier: have the ridge. Yeah. Which is great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have are, are we gonna pour, we are gonna pour, I’ll tell a story at the same time. There’s these, Instagram got me, there’s these little tiny. Like inch by inch squares called auto go that Instagram constantly is trying to sell me.

[00:03:38] Chris Coyier: But I I, when I bought two of them, we have some

[00:03:40] Robbie Wagner: road ones that are like that size. Yeah. Yeah. And

[00:03:42] Chris Coyier: they have on memory storage as well. And the beauty is you, you know, if you’re trying to get auto really spatial audio, you could put four of ‘em all around and then they have a native app. You connect them all to it and then record.

[00:03:53] Chris Coyier: But you’d think the recording would just be on your phone. It’s not. It’s on those devices. Ah. And when you’re done recording [00:04:00] it transfers them to your phone. And that’s a good trait. Yeah. It sounds like it’s gonna be annoying, but it’s not because you guarantee the kind of the fidelity of the recording on the thing anyway.

[00:04:10] Chris Coyier: we’re now looking at this wine. For those of you tuning in audio wise, it’s very

[00:04:14] Robbie Wagner: earthy smelling to me. Yes. It smells like the fields of ccino where it was grown. Monta chin, it smells absolutely wonderful to me. It does Really in the moon to

[00:04:24] Chris Coyier: drink this glass of wine. Yes.

[00:04:26] Robbie Wagner: Little, little jammy. And by glass I mean.

[00:04:29] Robbie Wagner: Plastic as much as you want. Yeah. It’s a plastic crap glass, you know. Well, we don’t wanna do dishes. Plus we’re like, that’s a fair point. The great, great and powerful wizard of CSS is coming to join us. We better get some nice shape.

[00:04:40] Chris Coyier: So

[00:04:41] Robbie Wagner: is that still me?

[00:04:42] Chris Coyier: I do still like CSSA lot. I think. I do think that’s still real.

[00:04:47] Chris Coyier: Yeah. Yes. Still irrelevant. Yes.

[00:04:48] Other: It,

[00:04:48] Chris Coyier: it is. There was a keynote this morning at All Things Open here that was, I think, touched on it about how like, a lot of time is wasted from people trying to, uh, [00:05:00] debug styling issues. ‘cause if you don’t know CSS at all, man, you can fall into a pit of trying to figure out what’s wrong with my styles.

[00:05:07] Chris Coyier: Yeah. Yeah. Which is cool. It’s like I don’t find my, I like, I undervalue perhaps my CSS skills a little bit. ‘cause I’m like, I, I don’t know the, the work I do now. I’m like, that is not what’s taking our product long to make. CSS is a very small piece of difficulty of it. Yeah. But I never do, I waste time on a, on a CSS problem.

[00:05:26] Chris Coyier: If there’s a styling problem, I just fix it and then we move on, you know? Yeah.

[00:05:30] Robbie Wagner: There’s a lot of stuff that’ll troll you. There was one I didn’t realize that like if you have a, uh, the, uh, Mozilla, what do you call it, the prefix stuff where it’s like under prefix dash mos? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:05:41] Robbie Wagner: And you put them both in this, like try to use both and do commas and have a big Oh, it doesn’t work. Right. And it have to be two separate blocks. Right. What Rob’s talking

[00:05:50] Chris Coyier: about is a selector, the entire selector is invalidated. If one of the comma separated pieces of the selector is invalid, that’s a little bit of [00:06:00] influx.

[00:06:00] Chris Coyier: ‘cause I, I think it may have been historically considered kind of a bad decision to do that. That Yeah. Maybe you shouldn’t kill the whole freaking selector. Yeah. Like, that’s a little unexpected. It trolled me for hours. I was

[00:06:10] Robbie Wagner: like, what is wrong? Yeah. Oh,

[00:06:12] Chris Coyier: that’s what it’s, so you’ll see that because that vendor prefixes are almost dead in C Ss.

[00:06:16] Chris Coyier: But there’s, there’s a few things hanging on. One of that you’ll still see is the styling of scroll bars. There is web standard stuff, but the ones where you use dash WebKit dash and dash Mazda You can do more with them. Mm-Hmm. So people tend to hang onto it longer, but you’ll always see them in separate blocks.

[00:06:35] Chris Coyier: And it’s for that reason. cause you, you can’t come and separate your mind wants to combine them. Yeah. ‘cause you’re like, this is not dry. Yeah. But if you do, you’re screwed. So

[00:06:45] Robbie Wagner: yeah, I have hit that. So should we, uh, should we rate this wine? Should this wine? Wine, yes. I think we should. So, first let’s talk about the flavors that we’re experiencing.

[00:06:54] Robbie Wagner: Yes. It, uh, let’s see that.

[00:06:56] Robbie Wagner: Hmm. It’s very tannic. Yep. It’s, uh, [00:07:00] full bodied. They would say fruit forward. Yeah. Would they be Yeah. Tastes a like, may be grapes. Getting some grapes. Yeah, there’s, it might be a little pork in mine too. Uh, yeah, we got, we got it a little bit co so hopefully not too bad, but, , yeah, quirky flavor. is there a tiny co I got a tiny bit of mine.

[00:07:17] Robbie Wagner: That’s okay.

[00:07:17] Other: Sorry.

[00:07:18] Robbie Wagner: yeah, I don’t know. I’m actually struggling to get deep further than that and what I’m tasting, so, no, I don’t know. You, maybe you preceded me with earthy, but if it tastes a little earthy to me. Yeah. and it’s not just the dryness, but it ends up being a little dusty in my mouth somewhat and then a bit tart as it goes down.

[00:07:34] Robbie Wagner: That’s very good. Like very drinkable. Yeah. Alright, so, uh, drinkable for our first time guest here. , so we have a highly, advanced, You know, rating system, rating system 10. But I was gonna say like, you know, wines do like a hundred points. If we just do zero to eight tentacles, we could change the scale for these live episodes.

[00:07:51] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I, well, yeah. Well, why say we still do what? Zero to 800 tentacles? Oh, I like the eight because

[00:07:57] Chris Coyier: octopuses have eight tentacles. Right. That’s, [00:08:00] I like it.

[00:08:01] Robbie Wagner: So, , zero being horrible. You’d never have this again. Four being like, eh, middle of the road. Okay. Eight being amazing. This is your forever house wine.

[00:08:10] Robbie Wagner: Oh wow. This is Pull your house wine. That’s just how, that’s what I say. That’s what an eight is.

[00:08:14] Chris Coyier: Absolutely not. I have those and this isn’t there, but it’s, but I’d really like it too, but I’m not prepared, let’s say to give it a even a seven. So six or six and a half. It is great though. It’s fitting the bill right now and it’s just being Italian.

[00:08:29] Chris Coyier: A little outside of my normal French go-to wine stuff. Mm-Hmm.

[00:08:34] Robbie Wagner: What do you, oh, you do French?

[00:08:35] Chris Coyier: Yeah, I’m a burgundy guy. Know? I was gonna say,

[00:08:37] Robbie Wagner: I have two French, uh, ones I know and I intentionally did it

[00:08:39] Chris Coyier: because of your. I don’t know how, how public it is, but, uh, truck plus Italy is a thing.

[00:08:45] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, yeah.

[00:08:45] Robbie Wagner: No, that’s okay. Well, now I’m fired. And the one thing I had left, Chris, I didn’t say anything. I know. No, that’s, you could just like Italy. I don’t know. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. so no, and I appreciate that nod. So what do you think then we, what did you give it?

[00:08:58] Chris Coyier: I said six or six [00:09:00] and a half. Is that unc Uncommit?

[00:09:01] Chris Coyier: We can just say six if we’re not doing half tentacles. It’s a little gross. I can’t even publish this one now. Six, because you won’t pick a fucking number. Six. Six hundreds. Six tentacles out of eight tentacles.

[00:09:11] Robbie Wagner: All right, Robert? I mean, I love Brunes. They’re all great. So this one I’ve had like one or two that weren’t as great, but this one is pretty not bad.

[00:09:22] Robbie Wagner: It’s pretty standard being DOCG, it kind of has to taste a certain way or they can’t put the label on it. Right. So like it’s accurate and I give it a seven. I think I really like Okay. Those, yeah. I think it’s good. , it lacks a little bit of, like fuller more body for me. Like it’s got, it’s kind of a two note wine for me.

[00:09:44] Robbie Wagner: Like Yeah, it’s good. It’s very drinkable. Okay. I’d enjoy this probably with some, you know, actually like with a nice pizza or a good red sauce. Like maybe even something with a tiny spice to it because that with a fruit I think would balance for me. Mm. Um, but on its own independently, it’s kind of like a five, it’s [00:10:00] sort of like it’s above average.

[00:10:02] Robbie Wagner: I would enjoy it. I do think I’d probably pick something else.

[00:10:04] Chris Coyier: Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. Two, two note wine. Yeah. You, you’re good at convincing me. I’m great at doing a wine tour. ‘cause whatever they say I am like Yes. That is what I hear. You are. I

[00:10:15] Robbie Wagner: agree. I love the power of suggestion. And by the time you get to like the third or fourth taste Mm-Hmm.

[00:10:19] Robbie Wagner: You’re like, everything’s great here.

[00:10:21] Chris Coyier: I love it. To be the aftertaste is, is quick.

[00:10:24] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah.

[00:10:24] Chris Coyier: And that it, it. it wants to go away, but then it like a little bitterness lingers and I’m like, if you’re gonna be as full bodied as that, he deserves a little more mouth feel or something.

[00:10:33] Other: Mm-Hmm mm-Hmm. Yeah, I get that.

[00:10:35] Other: That’s good. Let’s keep it

[00:10:36] Robbie Wagner: coming. Yeah. He’s got the bottle. Oh, yes. Yes. Okay. Everyone was just looking at me all of a sudden because you are trying to keep all of the wine just past

[00:10:45] Chris Coyier: noon here on the east coast.

[00:10:46] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Yeah. This is, uh, wine is for lunch. They said all things open. So we opened the wine. The wine.

[00:10:51] Robbie Wagner: Clever. And should all things be open, I mean, that’s a wide net if you think about it. Oh my gosh. That was a best segue I’ve [00:11:00] ever heard. Yeah.

[00:11:02] Chris Coyier: Are you talking about code licensing? Oh my gosh, yeah. Code licensing. Are we going there? Is

[00:11:07] Robbie Wagner: interesting. I think we should, because I, well first of all, I experienced, , going through a change in license, which I know pisses a lot of people off, but.

[00:11:18] Robbie Wagner: Um, oh, you just did this with Shepherd? Yeah. Like a month ago. Yeah, not long ago. Oh, so it’s still, okay. So it went from MIT Yeah. To the A GPL something. Yeah. A GPL. So it’s the Apache new blah, blah, blah license. Yeah. What with a commercial carve out or whatever. And so if you’re using it for commercial purposes, you should purchase a enterprise license.

[00:11:45] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. And we offer two.

[00:11:46] Other: Okay.

[00:11:47] Robbie Wagner: And the, the variance there is only in like, okay. How many websites you use it on, on repeat. Okay. And the support, we offer some support out of it. So it’s like 50 bucks. You get up to five websites. It’s like [00:12:00] SAS Open 50 Source is one website. This particular license website?

[00:12:02] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Is it one website? Okay. And then the other is, and then the other is no discount, like don’t

[00:12:05] Chris Coyier: think about it anymore kind of thing.

[00:12:07] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. So open source stuff. Can you make money from that?

[00:12:11] Chris Coyier: Well, this was what we were just talking about, right? You switch from a, from MIT to GPLA. GPL. Yeah. With the enterprise carve out whatever you call it. Yep. Couple. Okay. And it kind of worked, right? So I am curious though. Let, I’ve used Shepherd js and when I downloaded it, it was MIT, right?

[00:12:27] Chris Coyier: Absolute. Because actually it was before this switch. Yes. Is mine still MIT or Yes. Free version. It is version 14 I You don’t have to pay, not anything do MPM upgrade or whatever it is. Then now it might code is subject to a new thing. Yes. But it’s a major version. So you should go check the release notes.

[00:12:43] Chris Coyier: You should go check release notes. Okay. Which will tell you you need a license. Well, I honestly didn’t, I didn’t really know, know this. This is a little, it’s a little new to me. You

[00:12:50] Robbie Wagner: can get a license if you send me a, something cool open. So yeah, it’s exchange. We’re actually very open on like. if you help us, you submit some [00:13:00] prs or whatever, like we’ll give you a free license.

[00:13:01] Robbie Wagner: Like, we don’t care. We are not, we’re not phoning home and like really caring about the license. We’re not managing the license at this point. Like, you know, honor system pay if you’re using it a lot and like, isn’t all open source licensing to a degree kind of an honor system. Like I’ve definitely heard, heard some ‘cause you could fork it.

[00:13:17] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Yeah. You, okay, so that’s another segue. But the first would point except

[00:13:20] Chris Coyier: for legal action, right? Like if you were upset out somebody. Right. It’s hard to litigate from, it’s hard what I understand. Yeah. It’s

[00:13:25] Robbie Wagner: very hard to litigate. I see. I listened to a couple, like when I was trying to figure out licensing, when I started the whole Shepherd Crow thing and there was a lot of talk like, okay, so, uh, shepherd briefly was a SaaS and was working with a portfolio company and things didn’t go growth wise as they expected.

[00:13:44] Robbie Wagner: Okay. From a GitHub stars. To paid users. Yep. Right. Because devs or devs, they wanna make their own thing. They don’t need me to integrate with their analytics. They’re already doing it pretty good. Okay. If they’re savvy, right? That’s all there. But so yada, yada, yada. [00:14:00] Fast forward, I had listened to a few podcasts around that, trying to make a smart decision into how we license the open source.

[00:14:06] Robbie Wagner: ‘cause the intention was always to keep the library itself open source. And either the SaaS would just add magic on top.

[00:14:13] Chris Coyier: Yeah, that’s

[00:14:13] Robbie Wagner: hard. Or you can still do your own thing. We don’t wanna, we don’t want rock that boat. We like the community.

[00:14:18] Chris Coyier: Yeah. The bonus features are the ones that trying to Yeah. Offer something.

[00:14:22] Chris Coyier: But the core

[00:14:22] Robbie Wagner: library is super open. Yeah. So that was the idea. So it’s still pretty much

[00:14:26] Chris Coyier: is, it pretty much is

[00:14:28] Robbie Wagner: and yeah. Trying to litigate something more than that. And honestly I guess it would be the court

[00:14:32] Chris Coyier: of public opinion really. It would pr, you know, maybe you could win a court case, but. Mostly you’d be like, if you were somehow upset about some company using your thing right.

[00:14:41] Chris Coyier: Without buying the license or whatever. You could just say that they were doing that and theoretically the people of all things open would revolt because they, it’s, it’s not a good look. Right. You’re Yeah. Breaking the license of, of open source or don’t some, there needs to be some warriors that get pissed about stuff like that, that say

[00:14:57] Robbie Wagner: like, respect the community.

[00:14:59] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Framework goes [00:15:00] into this for a point. Like whatever that licensing is, respect that. Yeah. Yeah. Or I guess fork it and do whatever you want. ‘cause that is an option.

[00:15:07] Chris Coyier: Yeah. So here’s, I I have a question though. You, you just do it based on number of websites? Is that the only metric? Yes. So it’s

[00:15:13] Robbie Wagner: one website for the first one and then six for the other one.

[00:15:17] Robbie Wagner: Six. I don’t know what you do if you’re more than six. we don’t monitor it. So it’s really just more of like, you’re obviously in, but it’s nice to throw a limit

[00:15:23] Chris Coyier: on it just for fun. Yeah. Email in if it’s a thing. Yeah. But point being, it could be literally google.com that is on equal footing with.

[00:15:32] Chris Coyier: Yeah, whatever Johnny do, W dot comly. It’s not meant to like make a ton of money. It’s just like, you know, we put work into this. I’m thinking stay a little bit. I’m right. And you What I like about that is it’s so straightforward that it’s just, you don’t have to think about it much, but other things in this world do make you think about it a little bit more.

[00:15:48] Chris Coyier: One of them is, for whatever reason, fonts, have you ever bought a font, a paid font? Oh yeah. They, they want every time it down, want do it on page views. Yeah. That’s their number one thing they wanted to do. And I hate that. I [00:16:00] just don’t like that, you know, for No, but it’s, it’s trying to be like, are you big?

[00:16:03] Chris Coyier: Then you can afford it. So like, I kind of get it. I hate love to begin with though, because I’ve always worked on whatever, pat myself on the back. High traffic, low profit, high traffic, low profit websites. Yeah. Yeah. And then it always screwed me. ‘cause I was like, oh, I need a couple million page views.

[00:16:17] Chris Coyier: Yeah. What are you trying to charge me? Law, you know? But, and I’ve seen a variation on it that wasn’t page views, but it was a either revenue or number of employees. Okay. You know, like. That was, I liked that a little better. ‘cause I feel like by the time you’re 50 plus employees, you’re just in a different category of business that has a few more bucks laying around.

[00:16:38] Chris Coyier: Yeah. That’s

[00:16:39] Robbie Wagner: reasonable. I do like the flat fee though. Like, I think if you have a premium product, just set a premium price to begin with. Be like, we only want people with like a lot of traffic. Yeah.

[00:16:49] Chris Coyier: Otherwise we don’t care. Oh, that sucks for me though. Yeah. You know, our, our collectively favorite web app, of course being Appcues, you know, Chuck’s one of his favorite seasons.

[00:16:58] Chris Coyier: It’s a good, it’s, it’s a good

[00:16:59] Robbie Wagner: [00:17:00] app. I actually

[00:17:00] Chris Coyier: like use, I’m not trying to throw it in bad. I was gonna say there’s no shit. I actually think it’s, it is a good web app. I just think the pricing model, the pricing is

[00:17:06] Robbie Wagner: whacked monthly active users and then just assuming that everybody’s getting value from that specific thing.

[00:17:12] Robbie Wagner: Right. Because monthly active users has to do with covering their No, but there’s

[00:17:15] Chris Coyier: one more metric. Even as part of that, that I think is a big deal. It’s it’s monthly active users who are paid. Right. Because you get, unfortunately at CodePen we have, we had a lot of monthly active users who are just free.

[00:17:27] Chris Coyier: so if you were, and then if you added anonymous to that like a, then it would be outta whack. Oh gosh. So we kind of three categories. We had like logged out, just somebody just arrives at the site that was never even on the table for using a product like that. And it’s not just app user, it would be anything.

[00:17:42] Chris Coyier: It’d be like, metrics app. A lot of analytics apps are this way. Oh gosh, yes. Where they want to charge you kind of by the user. Yeah. So anonymous was out. It’s always out. Because that number’s too high. Yep. And then there’s logged in free, which is a good category. ‘cause there’s like a one foot step closer to being paid.

[00:17:58] Chris Coyier: Yeah. At least start funnel. So I wanna use funnel, your [00:18:00] freaking thing. I wanna show them little flows. Yeah. I wanna do what she can do for sure. But as an upsell, be like, Hey, did you know, you know, a little finger? Do you see this feature? Yeah. And you’d have access to it if you were pro, is that your,

[00:18:12] Robbie Wagner: is that Kermit?

[00:18:13] Chris Coyier: I was gonna say, was that Kermit? You doing Kermit? That’s, that’s his. Cousin Shepherd.

[00:18:18] Robbie Wagner: And then if you just like slightly tangentially, you could also like upgrade that to a Grover if you make it a little Alaska.

[00:18:24] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Have you seen this? That’s right up here. It’s far weird. You could have access.

[00:18:35] Chris Coyier: All tours should be at that voice.

[00:18:37] Chris Coyier: That would, exactly. That would be amazing. But that was a category AI voice component logged in, but free. Yes. And then if you’re already paid, that’s great and all, because what these products, particularly Appcues, I felt was a, was focused around this. They had all this corporate philosophy around the idea that first you’re just a, you’re just a user.

[00:18:55] Chris Coyier: You, of course, you’ve already paid money, but you’re just a, you’re kind of a nobody. [00:19:00] And then you become engaged and then you become like a super user and then you be like at the highest echelon, you’re almost part of their marketing team. You’re like fueling the network effects of this thing. Yeah. And you’re trying to move people forward in these buckets.

[00:19:15] Chris Coyier: Uh, through their thing, but that presupposed that step one. You’ve already given ‘em money. Yeah, and I’m like, if, if we are only using this product to pay people, the pricing is fine. But I wanted to use it one step down from that where you weren’t yet paying customers. Right. Because it makes it harder to pay for it.

[00:19:31] Chris Coyier: It’s

[00:19:31] Robbie Wagner: an onboarding app for like new users, but it’s also like, you know, you want to teach them the features or point out underutilized things from those accounts in order to push them through the funnel. Which is these kinds of products make sense for, but their pricing scheme doesn’t make sense for.

[00:19:48] Robbie Wagner: You’re like, yeah.

[00:19:49] Chris Coyier: So I don’t know. honestly, it’s a reason to use Shepherd, which is like, it’s open source, yo. Yeah. It’s open

[00:19:55] Robbie Wagner: source. Like give them your nudges. Tell it’s stupid. We, you know, you [00:20:00] don’t have to tell, and honestly, it might as well to be free if you’re worried

[00:20:02] Chris Coyier: about the, the, the corporate life.

[00:20:04] Chris Coyier: What did

[00:20:04] Robbie Wagner: you say? You charge $50? Yeah, 50 bucks. That’s literally free. Yeah. It’s basically free.

[00:20:08] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah.

[00:20:08] Robbie Wagner: you know, and I’ve been surprised at the success of it. I’m happy about that. And honestly, and I think I told you this before, which was, oh, I just saw that intro js, another very popular tour library that is open source, that have been for a while, has been under the same model, and it’s just unlike autopilot.

[00:20:25] Robbie Wagner: And you can prioritize issues from folks who have paid. That’s great. I’d love to do that. Freedom. Yeah. Nice. You know, why not? Yeah, that’s cool. It’s a reason to sort of like elevate your voice in the issues backlog. Mm-Hmm. Which of course we have very little so. Yes, because we write flawless code on it.

[00:20:40] Robbie Wagner: We write flaw. The TypeScript always gets the types right? Absolutely. Every time. Every time. Tuesday is

[00:20:44] Chris Coyier: 24 hours a day. All you do is close issues. Yeah, exactly. So 24 hours, you get a full 24 hour

[00:20:49] Robbie Wagner: window to do that. you know, so that makes me think about another very interesting open source model, which is a bunch of these products that are like really nice, robust.

[00:20:59] Robbie Wagner: [00:21:00] SaaS products Okay. In the cloud. But they offer a self-hosted model. Oh yeah. So they’re open source and you can self host also if you want to. Right. So you’ve got your super base, you’ve got like post hog uhhuh. There’s are some really huge ones where you can do that. Although for one, I find, uh, post hogs free tier very generous.

[00:21:17] Robbie Wagner: So least for now. you know, millions of activations. Yeah.

[00:21:20] Chris Coyier: Is that, that’s funny. Their model is almost like you could do this, but do you want to Seriously, I think

[00:21:25] Robbie Wagner: that’s the thing though. Yeah. Is that I’ve never met anyone who’s actually taking advantage of it, who is self-hosting all these things.

[00:21:31] Robbie Wagner: It’s gotta be like a huge, they just like the vibes

[00:21:34] Chris Coyier: of it. I think they like a fang company that wants

[00:21:36] Robbie Wagner: to use it and they would need to self-host it anyway. ‘cause they have all these regulations that you can’t use the cloud You did. Yeah. Or you like, want

[00:21:43] Chris Coyier: it in your little dockers and stuff because Right.

[00:21:46] Chris Coyier: Yeah.

[00:21:46] Robbie Wagner: and I guess that’s nice and, but it almost feels like. a disadvantage for their enterprise customers, right? Like, oh, I would like to self-host super base, potentially, but I’d be doing it like, you know, in a little cloud [00:22:00] instance or some small box I had home or something like that. And that is way harder for me.

[00:22:04] Robbie Wagner: But if are, need like 10 services at least to get it the same. Exactly. And if you’re an enterprise company with, , a team that is skilled enough to do this, potentially, that seems a little bit weird, but I guess possible. But I’ve always found it to be a very interesting marketing tactic because like one very obvious case is, okay, you have launched darkly, right?

[00:22:24] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Feature flags that get like embedded in your code. So they’re, they’re deep in your shit and they’re expensive too, from what I understand. Are they right? Are so you have other companies doing flags also, so like Flag Smith is one and it offers a self-hosting model. Yeah. So that seems more friendly to the community.

[00:22:40] Robbie Wagner: Okay. Right. Yeah. Or you have, I mean, I think Century can self-host. Something like that. Like centuries number one. Pretty much. Can you and nobody does all phones,

[00:22:47] Chris Coyier: just to make sure we’re fully derailed here. Can you paint a picture of me to why I need an expensive feature flag service? Like can you be there debre for a minute?

[00:22:55] Chris Coyier: Because to me I’m like all right, I’m gonna go to the user table. I’m gonna add a column that’s like [00:23:00] feature flag or maybe, oh no wait, I’m gonna use a relational database. I’m gonna have a feature flag table. And on the user column I’m gonna point to the feature flags that those users have and they’re on or they’re off.

[00:23:10] Chris Coyier: Well I think it’s not that so got

[00:23:12] Robbie Wagner: it done. They have like a complex, like you can go in and be like, these 10 people are this kind of person and they can see these pages and not these behavioral tracking stuff like that. So you can cohorts tree of who can see what instead of just on and on. Yeah. So you can create cohorts.

[00:23:29] Robbie Wagner: integrated to your marketing funnels. A cohort. Yeah. That’s the fancy word for groups of people that like fall into certain buckets. You can also do randomly testing Right. In criteria

[00:23:39] Chris Coyier: for falling into that can be rather exotic. Yeah. It can

[00:23:42] Robbie Wagner: be a, they’re signed up as a free user who has clicked a, b, C thing.

[00:23:48] Robbie Wagner: Now let’s , show them some additional features that might, so you could track that stuff yourself and then still use a dumber feature flag library that just turns it off and on. Yeah. It’s like no sense, but they track a lot of extra stuff’s. I think it’s

[00:23:59] Chris Coyier: tracking [00:24:00] of the extra stuff that’s more interesting than can see.

[00:24:03] Chris Coyier: Yes. Now.

[00:24:03] Robbie Wagner: Yes, exactly. It’s not on off, it’s bucketing. That starts to get

[00:24:07] Chris Coyier: better. All right. You’ve sold me LaunchDarkly, everyone? Yeah. Or the one that offers

[00:24:13] Robbie Wagner: self-hosting. I don’t know. There’s a couple of those too. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:24:17] Chris Coyier: I get it though. It’s, yeah, it’s almost like signaling to have one of these, you can self-host it things is like a loss leader or something for their, their paid thing, or it’s to like trick you into not doing that.

[00:24:28] Robbie Wagner: So I don’t work for post hog, but post hog has both analytics and feature flagging in their own thing. Oh yeah. Are they uh, they are open source. They are self, I think post, is that an

[00:24:38] Chris Coyier: email deal or is it analytics? Oh, post hog? No, it’s, it’s a analytics, it’s tracking analytics.

[00:24:42] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Okay. But open source and they’ve got a cute Google.

[00:24:44] Robbie Wagner: Oh god dang. I should know

[00:24:45] Chris Coyier: that. I tried to, tried to get us to use it because of self posting. I know. And then we looked at it and we’re like, yeah,

[00:24:50] Robbie Wagner: that’s gonna be hard. That’s too much you.

[00:24:53] Chris Coyier: Sure. Thanks.

[00:24:53] Robbie Wagner: wine is for breakfast. Yeah. Yes. Drink or be gone. It’s loosening us up, up. Although

[00:24:57] Chris Coyier: you’re, I’ve heard you say now ‘cause we’re sitting here [00:25:00] again at All Things open.

[00:25:01] Chris Coyier: You can hear the crowd noise. Yep. People come by. No. People love visiting booths. I’ll tell that about. They do. They do. They like, they come the hell up. So good. Yeah, I know. That’s why they’re here. And they come by with a bag that’s just waiting to be filled full, full of fucking T-shirts. Every year you

[00:25:17] Robbie Wagner: get new t-shirts or something.

[00:25:18] Robbie Wagner: That’s the way you think about it. I don’t know. Yeah. I’m trying to reduce my T-shirt. Like I don’t need a lot of junk T-shirts like that. But we have nice t-shirts. We do have nice t-shirts

[00:25:27] Chris Coyier: and they want to know what this this podcast is and all that. Yeah. I lost my train of thought a little bit. I was gonna, I was gonna connect the dots there.

[00:25:33] Chris Coyier: Post, post ho. Yeah. Post hog. Not that post. Post

[00:25:37] Robbie Wagner: hog. Uh, this episode is sponsored by post hog. , I’ll be sending you a bill. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:25:43] Chris Coyier: It’s almost like a, a like a badge of of success, isn’t it? Have you heard of the, like kids will do tiktoks where they, they like lie about having a sponsor ‘cause it’s like a badge of pride, you know?

[00:25:53] Chris Coyier: Do said all the time. Yeah. I just did it speak depth words

[00:25:57] Robbie Wagner: to the olds. I have spoken to some folks over [00:26:00] there, but, you know, I do think be interesting, just throw out sponsors like that, but then be like, oh, we’re gonna cut this out of the episode if you don’t pay this invoice. Like, we, we’ve done it for you already.

[00:26:11] Robbie Wagner: Did you like that episode? That’s so fucked up. Arbitrage. Yeah. If I’m gonna do that, I’m gonna reach. So now’s a great time to, uh, announce that uh, the podcast has been acquired by K Pen. Really? We’re buying it. Yeah, you’re buying it. And, uh, for announce there’s a lot of levels below me, so I don’t know.

[00:26:26] Robbie Wagner: Everything we’re, yeah. I don’t know. Yeah. This one is also sponsored by NB Cuni Universal. Yeah. There you go. I was gonna say, I don’t think you wanna buy this one. It doesn’t outperform shop talk, so Yeah, I bet we’re. Neck and neck these days. Not according to state of Js, where we have to be written in, where the boat are, we gotta get written in.

[00:26:45] Robbie Wagner: We’ve got four votes and Robbie and I did two of them. That’s we’re all living in some Texas shadow anyway. Oh well. Yeah. They blow everyone out of the water. Yeah. That’s a whole other thing

[00:26:52] CTA: This just in! Whiskey.fund is now open for all your merch needs. That’s right, Robbie. We’re [00:27:00] hearing reports of hats, sweaters, and T-shirts, as well as a link to join our Discord server. What’s a Discord server? Just read the prompter, man. Hit subscribe. Leave us a review on your favorite podcast app and tell your friends about our broadcast. It really does help us reach more people and keeps the show growing. All right, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

[00:27:26] Robbie Wagner: where I’m reading there in nineties,

[00:27:28] Chris Coyier: Chuck Colostrum in the nineties, and it, it’s just about what it felt like to be in that decade.

[00:27:31] Chris Coyier: And man, yeah. There was no decade more that selling out was like the worst, the worst thing you could do in the nineties. he was talking about like Nirvana and stuff, Kurt, you know, like I would not, he was like embarrassed that he was popular. Every interview ever with Kurt Cobain I remember was like, was like, I wouldn’t even like us we’re too popular kind of thing, you know?

[00:27:50] Chris Coyier: Yeah. And now it’s so wild different. I do remember that how pissed different off per

[00:27:54] Robbie Wagner: Cobain was that he got lumped in the Pearl Jam just because he felt like they were super popular. Yeah. And he was like, that ain’t, [00:28:00] that’s not us. Uh,

[00:28:01] Chris Coyier: you know, as, as iconic as Mont is, Pearl Jam was sold a lot more records and afraid everybody.

[00:28:06] Chris Coyier: Yeah.

[00:28:06] Robbie Wagner: Yes.

[00:28:07] Chris Coyier: I don’t know. Why are we talking about Pearl Jam? I don’t know. Because

[00:28:10] Robbie Wagner: I’m a Gen Xer and Pearl Jam is fucking awesome. Yeah, they’re still them live. Uh, not since like 2002, but wow. They’re back. Go see ‘em at the, the Vegas thing. I would love to, except for I’m just, I don’t have a stamina or they have the fucking speech.

[00:28:24] Robbie Wagner: They’re,

[00:28:25] Chris Coyier: they’re done. They

[00:28:27] Robbie Wagner: were though. Oh, okay. I probably still would’ve passed because just concerts don’t work for me. ‘cause they go later than 10 30. Oh. And then you might not, concerts are the worst. Might seen the headline, right? You think

[00:28:36] Chris Coyier: all things open. There’s a lot of people. Oh, try going maybe.

[00:28:39] Chris Coyier: No, I’ll go concerts. Big concert, I’ll go to a local show or whatever.

[00:28:43] Robbie Wagner: But you’ve gotta be done earlier. Yeah. Like if you’ve got 10 bands playing and you’re the last one, I’m not gonna stay for that. No. Unless it maybe starts at like noon. I do appreciate. So the last like, stadium show I saw really with my wife and, and some friends.

[00:28:57] Robbie Wagner: It’s been a little while, but it was, , cold [00:29:00] play at like FedEx Field with some crazy shit. Did you lose the bet? Coldplay’s good. You’re listen, you are, are disagree, hard disagree words I can’t say without getting canceled right now, but you know what I mean. okay. I can use my imagination then. Yeah, just go with that.

[00:29:13] Robbie Wagner: I mean my wife was probably more into them recently, but I saw them a long time ago at, uh, Coachella. They put on a great live show. It is like as good or better than the albums. It’s kinda like when you go see Phish and you’re like, the albums are okay. The live show is fucking great. Mm. I gotta say Coldplay put on a great live show.

[00:29:31] Robbie Wagner: and I love ‘cause they were in the center and not just like on one side and then killing off half the seats. And so they had like four stages set up and they were going to different parts. What So everybody got a closer show? Oh, that cool. Thought that was awesome. Yeah. And they gave you these like weird wristbands they set up and they Synchron four stages.

[00:29:49] Robbie Wagner: They set up four stages, I guess if you’re that rich and for certain songs, they would must be hard. They would send out signals to the armbands and do different like color shows that everyone was [00:30:00] involved in. Wow. So it was a great show overall. Okay. I take back what I said. They still suck musically, but like Cool, cool.

[00:30:07] Robbie Wagner: Show idea. I do like that. Yeah. Yeah. So, but you’re

[00:30:09] Chris Coyier: also trapped in the stadium. That’s nice. I know, I know. That’s the thing.

[00:30:12] Robbie Wagner: But in general, this, oh, I, but

[00:30:13] Chris Coyier: I can now I can picture it more. So you’re, it’s like an American football field or whatever. Yes. They were pointed up at the stands. That’s how that worked.

[00:30:21] Chris Coyier: It wasn’t like they were around you, you were around them

[00:30:26] Robbie Wagner: kind of. Yeah. So it was almost like a big cross where like the ends of the cross. So they had a center stage. You could go through the cross people. Yeah. And they could run to the other stands and do different stuff. And they had like full setups on a couple of the stands too.

[00:30:40] Robbie Wagner: Okay. So it’s like the singer could come out and do a piano over here. Now they have the full setup on this one and they come and do like a three piece for that part. And yeah, it was really cool. Interesting. So I would’ve to say like, that was neat and like made the live experience seem worth it. But otherwise, I don’t know.

[00:30:57] Robbie Wagner: I, I saw Ray Lamont like a [00:31:00] month ago and I Oh yeah, me too. I think he’s great. Didn’t, did

[00:31:03] Chris Coyier: you see him with Greg and Isab

[00:31:04] Robbie Wagner: or were they Yes. Yeah. And we, so we saw all of them and they were amazing and there was an opener before them. But then he doesn’t come on until 10 by 10 30 and it’s like a Thursday night.

[00:31:13] Robbie Wagner: I’m like, Ugh. I don’t know. As soon as the wife was like, can’t do it, I was like, great, let’s go. That’s why we need to get

[00:31:18] Chris Coyier: retired. So we’re less worried about,

[00:31:20] Robbie Wagner: yeah, maybe, you know, I have young kids and needs to where I can sit in a nice chair. Yeah. It’s like in a section that’s. Because like when you’re standing in the general admission area, no, I don’t do that.

[00:31:30] Robbie Wagner: All these kids just come and like shove everyone up to the front and you’re just like, I’m, no, I’m seated. I just work my way out and I’m gonna stand in the back with the other dads. Yeah. And like why don’t go see bands? Maybe have too many. That’s what I’m talking about. Young kids Hour kids like cold play.

[00:31:48] Robbie Wagner: No. No. Huh. And Ray La Mont was full of , folks that made me look young. I look, I

[00:31:54] Chris Coyier: went and peed during a Ray La Maintain song and looked up at the crowd and there was like, ‘cause I could see [00:32:00] the way the lighting of the show was, I could see, you know, 200 people or so. And there was a full third of them was yawning.

[00:32:05] Chris Coyier: Yeah, he is ale. He’s a sleepy dude. That is. And I’m sure all of ‘em were happy to be there.

[00:32:09] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. But uh, he’s very talented and love his stuff, but yeah. I mean, sleep fest. Yeah. Mom, wow. Well that’s a great what not or whatever. Yeah. Anyway,

[00:32:19] Chris Coyier: it’s open source worth it.

[00:32:21] Robbie Wagner: Oh, so, so I, yeah, you something. This is my problem.

[00:32:25] Robbie Wagner: Okay. I’ve been doing open source forever and like doing all these things that I thought would help my brand. Like I need, I need to have some rep, right? Like I want, want to have a green GitHub. I want to have some repos I’ve maintainer of, I want to like Yep. Be on and bur core team. I want to do all this stuff.

[00:32:43] Robbie Wagner: Yep,

[00:32:43] Chris Coyier: yep.

[00:32:43] Robbie Wagner: In hopes that it helps me get notoriety. Okay. And like be able to get jobs better or speaking opportunities or whatever. None of that shit matters. Like I’ve

[00:32:54] Chris Coyier: gotten no benefits from any of it. Well, I personally, okay. I mean, you’re at [00:33:00] Amazon now and I think, not to like do a devil’s advocate thing, but like that’s a.

[00:33:04] Chris Coyier: Pretty good job. I’m sure there’s lots of people that would be like, yes, but it

[00:33:07] Robbie Wagner: that all that had nothing to do with me getting that job. It really just didn’t delete code or die. Yeah, that’s, they don’t care the whole interview. Yeah. Wait, elite lead code. Yeah. Like good, very good code. No, that’s a whole thing where you, like you have practice problems, algorithm practice stuff.

[00:33:21] Robbie Wagner: Oh, okay. Yeah. So it’s like, you know, do a sorting algorithm or whatever. That’s how you

[00:33:25] Chris Coyier: got in is knowing all your sorts installed that. Yeah. Yeah. I just practiced lead

[00:33:28] Robbie Wagner: code for like three months. All the, all the menina companies require that. Yes. Manina is the new thing. The, there’s no more FANG or Meg.

[00:33:35] Robbie Wagner: Yes. So FANG is dead. It’s Manon. I know.

[00:33:37] Chris Coyier: Mana. Oh, is that all? And the first letter of a ton of, yeah. Meta

[00:33:41] Robbie Wagner: Apple, Netflix, Amazon. Where am I at? Nvidia. Nvidia as an N. Yeah. And then the last A We need one more. We need one more. A do you know any a companies that are worth a lot, Chris, that we could throw in there?

[00:33:52] Robbie Wagner: I would say Appcues is right up there from your recent Bills. Appcues is on there. Turns out, [00:34:00] uh, all the employees of Appcues are like, I haven’t gotten my stock hit yet. Yeah. Uh, Chris, you’re wrong. Yeah, sorry. Thanks for trying

[00:34:08] Chris Coyier: though. That’s tremendous. Alright, so it didn’t, it didn’t count, but I, you know, I will, did I already tell this story?

[00:34:13] Chris Coyier: I can’t even remember. Well, one of the keynotes just this morning was about, uh, open source community in Africa that’s been grown up doing super well and painted a picture of some personal stories of people that had a few prs get merged on some open source projects that led directly to jobs for them.

[00:34:32] Chris Coyier: And that’s like a win for some countries. And, yeah, I mean really, but it happened to be about Africa. It, it felt like a good. A good thing. You know, like that’s a way in, that’s a way in for these companies to, to break in. It can work. It has not helped me. There’s no be viewed as a more,

[00:34:49] Robbie Wagner: a better develop developer in any way.

[00:34:51] Robbie Wagner: Right? Yeah.

[00:34:52] Chris Coyier: I mean, did you, are we straight up saying like, for you, open source was a, just a, well, maybe I’m as

[00:34:57] Robbie Wagner: bad at everything and that’s the problem. [00:35:00] No, no, no. Your coat is good. Your, your face is bad. I think it’s hard problem. Well, the, the beard is good though. Yeah. Yeah. The beard, whenever I used to not have a beard, I would go to an interview shaved and they would be like, no, not you.

[00:35:10] Robbie Wagner: No. But then I’d grow the beard and they’d be like, this guy is wise. Look at that beard. Yes, that’s true. Dude, it

[00:35:16] Chris Coyier: sounds like a joke, but I’m almost sure that, that it really did matter. Yeah, it probably did. Maturity

[00:35:21] Robbie Wagner: difference in your face and like you can’t help some kind of visual biases, I think. Yeah, agree.

[00:35:27] Robbie Wagner: Like you might recognize them and, you know, reset that. But I think it does happen naturally. I mean, just as humans. Symmetry is beauty for us. Yeah, that’s true. And we are, drawn to that because we want to continue the species with the best level of beauty, we can make, but I have a hot and hotter take.

[00:35:45] Robbie Wagner: Oh, okay. Start with the hotter. Okay. So well now Yeah, because then the other one would sound boring. Oh, okay. So the hot take is that open source is a young person’s game in that it does take some grind and time. [00:36:00] And as you get older and your responsibilities increase, you have less and less of that available to kids.

[00:36:05] Robbie Wagner: Your nights and weakens aren’t yours anymore. They’re not yours anymore, and you can’t like, you know, just spray and pray across things. It’s partially time

[00:36:12] Chris Coyier: and partially like a mental shift into you get some personal value of your time. An email arrives in your inbox and it’s some entitled prick being like, this library doesn’t do this.

[00:36:21] Chris Coyier: I just, my mind, I, I can’t even, like, I will not address that. I cannot and will not. but you have no choice in open source. Like you, it is in, in your docket of responsibility. Maybe they don’t deserve a reply or something, but at some point that issue needs to be addressed in some way. Yeah.

[00:36:39] Chris Coyier: You

[00:36:39] Robbie Wagner: have to like manage that. Somebody has opened a piece of your time that you don’t have a choice in. Right? Yeah. Yeah. At some point or another you address that and you say maybe you can share the load with some others. There’s ways it can be managed. My favorite ones are the ones where they, like, you haven’t answered in two weeks and they ping you, Hey, any update on this?

[00:36:58] Robbie Wagner: Right. And like any update on your fucking [00:37:00] time in pr No. Yeah. You didn’t fix it already for me. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You have this opinion, right? You had enough time to write this and ask me again. Oh man. I got one the other day that was like, oh, the link to your documentation is wrong in the read me. And I was like.

[00:37:13] Robbie Wagner: That sounds like a fucking easy pr You could open like, Hey, did you know it’s still October? That one’s one of those. Did you know it’s still Hack tober? Hack octoberfest. Yeah. You so there. So hotter. Take you ready for this? Okay. All things open, but it’s interesting. So open source licensing, open source community as in general, like morally, like feels like a great thing to do and give back and whatever else.

[00:37:38] Robbie Wagner: But how many companies leverage that for like free work? Bunch of fucking idiots, We just get your free work. Like how much open source does, I mean, is Microsoft is better, your dark is like, no wonder Google has somewhere. Well just think about like, okay, I can find a country full of like, lower cost of living a lot of poor people and present them with a certain [00:38:00] level of training to work on open source with the promise of that high paying job Some somehow down the line. Yeah.

[00:38:05] Chris Coyier: I hate to admit that. I agree with you on that one and you can advantage of that. Yeah. To be promoting open source as this like potential gateway into future gains. Does feel a little gross to me. In the design world, they call that spec work. Exactly. Not, and, and the dev world doesn’t have that Yeah. It, feels weird to me. if you get something from it and you enjoy the

[00:38:23] Robbie Wagner: project and you contribute to it, then it’s community. But there is a sense of like some false promise that this leads. To a lucrative software engineering job because

[00:38:34] Chris Coyier: it doesn’t all the time. It often doesn’t.

[00:38:36] Chris Coyier: There’s no relation.

[00:38:37] Robbie Wagner: A lot of times it never, yeah. But it does make you learn things. Sure. Which you can then apply. It’s beneficial in that sense. Yeah. So it’s not, it’s not bad, but I think that it’s over promised for sure. Fair enough. What if you spent, like, say, you know, half your career contributing to an open source project that is kind of dead and dying.

[00:38:56] Robbie Wagner: who’s done that? I don’t know. I’m just saying [00:39:00] a hypothetically what hypothetical, hypothetically. Hypothetical. Could you tie that into any other animal based JavaScript framework? For example, just, I don’t know off the top of my head. I can’t think of turtle turtle.com. flaming death js, the ends of a Fire Fire.

[00:39:17] Robbie Wagner: What, what’s the que what’s the question here? Oh, I don’t know. I totally lost that. I was, was sitting on for fun. Okay. Yeah. On if fun, you have something you want me to address there? No, no. I can, I just, I mean, but okay. So fair point. I mean, right. You can reflect back to your own career and see that like at times something that you had passionate about.

[00:39:37] Robbie Wagner: And I’m sure you’re not, you don’t regret contributing to it. You don’t regret being a part of it. You enjoyed your time there, but to have any sort of like feeling like you are due fruits of that labor or that, you know, why don’t people have the same enthusiasm about this project at this time that I do?

[00:39:53] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Well the secret is the people that have the money to hire you do not give a shit about anything. You [00:40:00] know your notoriety at all. ‘cause they’re like, well what can you do for me? And how does it make me money? Okay. And you being like, popular doesn’t make me any more money. You, you still need to ship the same code.

[00:40:12] Robbie Wagner: I mean, you’re

[00:40:12] Chris Coyier: telling you I’ve wasted my

[00:40:13] Robbie Wagner: life too. Well, I, well, that’s an interesting thing. So let’s, so we’re gonna talk to Max tomorrow, right? Like we, today maybe, maybe we haven’t nailed it down yet. Right? So I mean, just think of that like, the creator of Home Brew couldn’t get Google Hired by Google, who use Home Brew.

[00:40:31] Robbie Wagner: Right? That’s a very obvious, like, wow. Is that a real story? That’s a real story. It’s very interesting. Yeah. My manager like, tells me, he interviews people and they’re like, oh, Robbie works there. I’ve heard of him from the community. Like I’m internationally renowned if you know Ber Yeah, right, sure. Small community so’s I’m not like a big deal, but whatever.

[00:40:49] Robbie Wagner: But like that didn’t, they don’t care about that. Didn’t, you didn’t get a LinkedIn job and you didn’t get a, wherever they’re at now. Why didn’t, because tried didn’t. You didn’t, right? Well, maybe you would’ve I, because during that time we had a business that was not dead. [00:41:00] Yeah. But I mean, you know, you would’ve had to study leak, like.

[00:41:04] Robbie Wagner: They don’t care that, you know, ever inside and out. Right. They still would’ve put you through a fucking whiteboard or whatever thing. Here you go. Chris Coyer, the wizard of CSS I’m still wor I’m still work shopping. Yeah. So we’ll get there. But, um,

[00:41:18] Chris Coyier: it’s the Bob

[00:41:19] Robbie Wagner: Bill. If you went to go like work with Adam Argyle at Google, they’re not gonna be like, fuck yeah.

[00:41:24] Robbie Wagner: We want Chris Coer a different fucking, we want that. Yeah. But they’re not gonna be like, they want you to be, your resume speaks for itself. They’re still gonna make you do leap code problems because that is their path to employment. Yeah. Which means I will definitely fail. Right. Wouldn’t that be fucked up to like, oh, you’re gonna come and work on CSS spec, you are gonna be a CSS expert.

[00:41:44] Robbie Wagner: Guess what you are? Everybody fucking knows it. Yeah. And they won’t offer you a job without you doing dumb fucking stuff like that. Is it just the climate now Thoughs, like, because

[00:41:52] Chris Coyier: I got my first startup job at Woo Fu. I was not rigorously technically interviewed They knew me. Because, because different,

[00:41:59] Robbie Wagner: it’s a, it’s [00:42:00] a barrier to entry now.

[00:42:01] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. It weeds out the people that can’t do it. Right. And it’s bullshit because just ‘cause I can’t do it in that 30 minutes you’re doing it with me doesn’t mean I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t figure it out eventually. Yeah. My problem solving shouldn’t require memorization. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. They’re like, don’t use the internet.

[00:42:16] Robbie Wagner: Like, guess what? Every day in my job, I use the internet. So. Yeah. And if they’re like Yeah. Uh, you know, do some, some binary tree shit thing in the world. Gonna NPM install binary tree. Right. Right. Like,

[00:42:27] Chris Coyier: why is it not worth something to me that I can re even if it wasn’t use the internet, that I have like a great community of people that I’ve spent my life building that if I had trouble with, I could lean on Yeah.

[00:42:39] Chris Coyier: To help me solve the problem. Yeah. Because guess if that’s valuable or not. I, you can tell me all day that it’s not, I know that it’s, oh, absolutely. Yeah. It’s incredible. Yeah, that was great. But I do worry, I like just to make sure that existential worry is a part of this episode. There was a time for many years that I thought it’s, I have somehow made it like I am fine now [00:43:00] if anything were to go belly up or I needed to change criticism, I could do it like this.

[00:43:04] Robbie Wagner: Yep.

[00:43:04] Chris Coyier: And in the last couple years, maybe five or if that feeling has totally evaporated Yeah. I would have just as much trouble finding a job as anybody else. Absolutely you would. And I think that’s sad though. It is. That’s my point. I hate to that. I don’t agree with that.

[00:43:18] Robbie Wagner: I agree that you would and I feel like it’s ridiculous to a point.

[00:43:23] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Like you said, you have a portfolio of community and past experiences and that’s the valuable part. Not whether you or a new grad can do lead code. Right. Yeah, it’s like date.

[00:43:36] Chris Coyier: I mean, it probably depends on what it is and whatnot, but yeah, I would, but I would try the old fashioned way. I would still try to paint a picture of what I’ve done and money I’ve made for people.

[00:43:46] Chris Coyier: I’d even spell it out like that. Yeah. That results. Results based

[00:43:50] Robbie Wagner: like that. I think there’s something to be said for that too. They go, oh, do this lead go problem. You just go, no, here’s why you should hire me. You wanna make money or maybe take it or leave it. I’m not gonna do your bullshit [00:44:00] whiteboarding, whatever.

[00:44:01] Robbie Wagner: Well, Amazon’s not gonna listen to that. But I think that there are plenty of other, I know over the last couple of years, because I’ve had my SP of being in the market for various reasons and going through loops at a startup in their series A and I do eight interviews and I’m like, I think you misinterpret for what you need here.

[00:44:20] Chris Coyier: Yep. Well, we know hiring. Look, we’re just hitting all the, hitting all the classics of episode. Yeah. Do we know any Ds is weird? Hiring is broken. Yeah. What

[00:44:28] Robbie Wagner: do you know about D Ns? I, I’ll say one thing. So DNS is hard. Madison had posted on, Twitter, I won’t call it other things.

[00:44:37] Robbie Wagner: , she had posted about another learning resource that she found. It was like Code Crafters io or something like that. Okay. But what I really liked about that is their projects were like, create a DNS server and stuff like that. And I think that is a smart thing. The lost art. Yeah. There’s a lost art of understanding, like how DNS even works, I mean, I guess it’s like a giant, like key value store to a degree. [00:45:00] It’s a hash map. Yeah. But like, how does that work fundamentally? I don’t, you can do it in a soundbite. No, BNS is

[00:45:05] Chris Coyier: actually complicated.

[00:45:06] Robbie Wagner: It is very complicated. But being able to like create your own rudimentary one.

[00:45:11] Robbie Wagner: I think I should clarify that I am still pro open source. I just recognize the nuances of it and where it can be taken advantage and where like, you know.

[00:45:21] Robbie Wagner: What, how do you monetize it? What is an appropriate fork and what reasons?

[00:45:26] Chris Coyier: Oh God. You’re the master of segs. You wanted to talk about, about I did, I did talk about Famous Fork Didn’t. Famous

[00:45:31] Robbie Wagner: Forks? ‘cause it’s been a couple of lately.

[00:45:33] Chris Coyier: Yeah. What’s the biggest, what’s the one that jumps to mind for you?

[00:45:36] Robbie Wagner: Pear ai?

[00:45:38] Robbie Wagner: Isn’t that the one? yeah. That’s hilarious. So there’s tons of, forever people are making browsers and lately forever people are making, , code editors. Right. Actually, I was thinking about, and I’m not even related to that, but I have seen a bunch of interesting drama around it.

[00:45:53] Robbie Wagner: So there’s that alternative to Unreal engine called Gado called Real Engine. Yeah, it’s called [00:46:00] Gado. But then, no. So Gau is Okay. That open source gaming engine is that Gal Gado. I wish. Top five. Top five. That’s in the top five. Absolutely. Are you kidding me? All right. And I don’t even have any degrees of separation in that.

[00:46:15] Robbie Wagner: So that’s a mom, by the way, anyway, sorry, that’s, if that’s offensive,

[00:46:19] Chris Coyier: but okay. So there’s a fork of Unreal Engine that’s called Gau. That’s what you’re saying? Well, it’s not

[00:46:23] Robbie Wagner: a fork. So wait, it’s, this was just the alternative to Unreal. Oh, just alternative. They had licensing stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So they got a bunch of people that were like, oh yeah, well, you know, that’s not gonna work for us.

[00:46:32] Robbie Wagner: Let’s have open source, gamer, developer things. Okay. But then there was some political argument that happened within the community and like. The community manager just started like blocking people and all this like crazy back and forth. Yeah. So someone forked it to re redo or red dot and uh Wow. With a different license too.

[00:46:51] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Well, and then they started to like switch other things. Okay.

[00:46:55] Chris Coyier: On the forks thing, so there’s, you were about to tell this story, but I am curious, anybody [00:47:00] can fork a project, right? Right. I probably accidentally have a fork of WordPress in my GitHub or something. Just that one time where I, there are projects that would get a button.

[00:47:07] Chris Coyier: There’s for

[00:47:07] Robbie Wagner: forks, they would only let you submit through forks.

[00:47:10] Chris Coyier: Yeah. I mean isn’t that how it originally worked? Yeah, it was. Yeah. So that’s probably why I do fork and pole. Yeah. But of obviously I would think to most people that that’s a different story. Yeah. It’s not, can you fork it? It’s, can you meaningfully fork it?

[00:47:23] Chris Coyier: Do you have a plan for your fork? Are you trying to make it the new canonical in a way you keep to the, do you have a team ready to do that? Those are like

[00:47:31] Robbie Wagner: huge questions. Well, and those forks are intended to be a downstream contributor. Those forks are. We have sp right? And this happened Node new thing.

[00:47:40] Robbie Wagner: The new node and io js, right? Yeah. That was a huge story. Story. So that was a big thing. And that was a disagreement in the community. And you’re essentially saying, me and my friends are going, taking my ball and going home. It’s a fork and

[00:47:51] Chris Coyier: rename.

[00:47:52] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, it is. It’s a rename. It’s a whole like, here’s our mission.

[00:47:55] Robbie Wagner: It’s clearly not the same as yours.

[00:47:57] Chris Coyier: that one was such a good one that has informed [00:48:00] future activity. I think so. So, and you see, because that one merged back in, it did, that feels like a, not an inevitability, but a possibility of these things. So look at how didn’t it happen relatively quickly with Redis?

[00:48:12] Chris Coyier: Like, oh, there’s some problems with the light. Yep. Oh, we’ll fork it at, it’s like back together, like,

[00:48:16] Robbie Wagner: yeah. Six days later. I think there’s a way to be like, listen, we’ll just fucking go if you, if you’re not in on this.

[00:48:22] Chris Coyier: Yeah. As long as you got the muscle to do it, the power plays of open source is interesting to me.

[00:48:27] Chris Coyier: It is interesting. I, I even think on a, on a, like an emotional level, it’s a reason that people get involved at all is that it’s a way if you have no other power in the world Yeah. Which is the thing Yes. That you can exhibit some of that power through, through being a strong, open source contributor. I, I think that some

[00:48:46] Robbie Wagner: people miss it to be your power in this world.

[00:48:47] Robbie Wagner: Some people miss the fact that you’re actually dealing with an asset that could have actual value. Right. Right. Having sold and reacquired the, IP of an open source. Right. Your object, a literal

[00:48:59] Chris Coyier: [00:49:00] example of

[00:49:00] Robbie Wagner: how this could be done. Absolutely. It, it can be sold off and it can come back potentially.

[00:49:04] Robbie Wagner: Right, right. But that people are contributing to a thing that has value and that’s monetary value, and that’s a very interesting aspect when you think about it, and that’s probably why people take their toys and go somewhere else, make a kind of threat. We will go somewhere else until we can come to agreement.

[00:49:23] Robbie Wagner: It’s

[00:49:23] Chris Coyier: just kind of easier said

[00:49:24] chris_coyier_AP: than

[00:49:24] Robbie Wagner: done. It is, yeah. Speaking of which,

[00:49:26] Robbie Wagner: since you mentioned WordPress, how do you feel about Matt personally? Oh, I don’t know. You never returned the me into it, or We can Well, we, we did a shop

[00:49:35] Chris Coyier: talk show about it too. No, I don’t, I I don’t mind it. I just think when you just look at straight up like individual choices and behavior, it’s easy to see like, , what is this Dick moved crap going on.

[00:49:46] Chris Coyier: Yeah. Right. to me it’s just obviously that it’s, there’s really weird rude behavior going on and there is some, and I hate to say on both sides ‘cause it feels like in this heated political moment. Yeah. I don’t want to hear on both sides sometimes, [00:50:00] but, uh, I think like it would’ve been potentially even easy for Matt and a Mac to paint a picture of a misbehaving company and gotten us all on their side very easily.

[00:50:14] Chris Coyier: Yeah. By just being like, It’s not about copyright. ‘cause it isn’t. Yeah. And it’s not about X, Y, and Z. It’s about a company that makes a lot of money off of this name and they’re not contributing back to the community that you and all I love. And just paint that picture and keep paint it and see if that works.

[00:50:32] Chris Coyier: At least start there. Do you think there’s anything? And that’s not what was done. It was just immediate huge, no, yeah. Gut punches right and left. And the one that really scares me, the one that I, my mind keeps going back to is the one where they just took advanced custom fields, which is a major, major plug in Yeah.

[00:50:49] Chris Coyier: For the WordPress world. They just took it overnight and they called it a fork. And it’s not a fork. It’s not a fork when you, they just stole it. When you keep the slug of the original, it’s not a fork. It’s not a [00:51:00] fork. My website’s without any. agreement by my side now say secure custom fields on it, which is the name that they called it, which is just a little petty jab at the fact that, oh, we did it because there’s a security vulnerability in it.

[00:51:12] Chris Coyier: So our version secure and their version isn’t. Yeah. It’s petty and it’s bullshit. Yeah, yeah. And now my website, it just, it, it bugs me to no end. That they just, they stole it. It’s theft. It’s just so uncool to me. And imagine being somebody who’s right now who’s working on a commercial WordPress plugin or something.

[00:51:29] Chris Coyier: They’re trying to make their money in the world with that as the plan. are you sleeping that night to know that it could be like, I’ll have that now. Yeah, you’re not. It’s mine. Not

[00:51:37] Robbie Wagner: every other thing is thinking like, oh my gosh, what could do him? Don’t cross that man. Because he will take your shit.

[00:51:43] Robbie Wagner: Just

[00:51:43] Chris Coyier: that week that I had to upgrade jet pack. ‘cause there was a major security vulnerability in it. Can I have jet pack? Can I just have it? Is that mine now? Like ah,

[00:51:52] Robbie Wagner: yeah,

[00:51:52] Chris Coyier: but I want, I, I. I want to like you, I want to continue liking WordPress and I want to continue liking the company I did [00:52:00] for most of my life.

[00:52:01] Chris Coyier: And then all of a sudden just the rudest, pettiest crap. I can imagine. Yeah. I don’t I’d I would be the first guy lining up to fight for you. And now I’m just out. I don’t even want to touch it.

[00:52:12] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Because I think it’s word,

[00:52:14] Chris Coyier: everything I ever do, if it’s, if it’s a publication, I just lean for it. because I know it.

[00:52:19] Chris Coyier: I feel like it does a pretty good job in it. absolutely. It has never scorned me. I think it’s pretty good software, which I

[00:52:24] Robbie Wagner: really love and appreciate. It’s like, why go to the next hot thing? Because people talk about it

[00:52:30] Chris Coyier: it is just software It, is just a database that spits out some templates and I can pick a different thing.

[00:52:36] Chris Coyier: That’s a database that spits out templates I can. And I will.

[00:52:39] Robbie Wagner: Well, there you go. You know This

[00:52:41] Chris Coyier: episode is

[00:52:41] Robbie Wagner: Sponsored by Astro db, Fred uh, will be sending you a bill also.

[00:52:48] Chris Coyier: Anyway,

[00:52:49] Robbie Wagner: I,

[00:52:49] Chris Coyier: I get worked up about that. ‘cause I just, it, it made me sad and mad to be like, what is going on? How much

[00:52:54] Robbie Wagner: of that is private equity fueled fights back and forth?

[00:52:57] Robbie Wagner: ‘cause isn’t that one of the things is like WordPress [00:53:00] engine is like associated with one private equity? Well, that gets pointed at a, a lot I think, but I don’t know if, is there truth

[00:53:05] Chris Coyier: to that or you think, well there must be some degree of it. Or at least that’s where the anger starts or something.

[00:53:11] Chris Coyier: That’s where somebody like it’s, you make more money than me and I’m mad about that. We got a little glimpse of that into what a Matt’s post where, and he’d taken it down since saying that his brain was poisoned by never activity. Oh yeah. Where, but D hh was like, you’re doing open source, dirty. Yeah.

[00:53:24] Chris Coyier: Which I agree with there can’t, he was saying there. There’s this set of shadow principles now, and that’s like really horrible for open source. And I, I tend to agree with that despite me not loving other things. DHH has said, I think he’s absolutely right about this. I think

[00:53:37] Robbie Wagner: he’s come into his like, mature era.

[00:53:39] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, possibly. Yeah. I’m starting to love everything. He, oh yeah. Yeah. I’m enjoying it. I hate to admit I’m kind of

[00:53:45] Chris Coyier: turning into a fan as well. Yeah. and then Matt went off on the Pettiest stuff. I could possibly imagine. He’s like, maybe you should, you know, focus on this instead of buying a race car.

[00:53:55] Chris Coyier: He was like, he basically just did a, he’s like, why don’t you have better market share? You know, [00:54:00] so, and, but it paints a picture to me. I’ve sat and had dinner with him before. That was a fun time. Matt loved to do it again, but now I know how you think about me now you think of me as a lesser man. Where’s my market share?

[00:54:11] Chris Coyier: Right? Right. I’m way smaller than DHH. You must think of me as an amp.

[00:54:15] Robbie Wagner: You wasted your money on a race car rather than whatever. And I was like, I waste

[00:54:19] Chris Coyier: my money on a. Custom banjo. Am I asshole? Right, right.

[00:54:22] Robbie Wagner: Because it brings you pleasure. Lo and behold,

[00:54:24] Chris Coyier: maybe you need a, and I get, everybody has a bad day.

[00:54:26] Chris Coyier: I’ve said some jerk ass shit online, but it didn’t happen one day. It happens every day.

[00:54:31] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. It’s, there’s something wrong. There’s never been to, like, I woke up and realized I might’ve gone too far. I better go to counseling. It’s double down all the time. Yeah. It’s doubling down, doubling down. It’s like that’s how you get divorced, motherfucker.

[00:54:43] Robbie Wagner: So I guess, you know, I dunno. I mean, relationships are not that different. Yeah. Yeah. Across, you know, that’s good. On that note, podcasting, we’re over an hour, so, okay. Well,

[00:54:58] Robbie Wagner: anything you

[00:54:58] Chris Coyier: wanna plug, Chris? [00:55:00] I want plug. Yeah. Yeah. I wanna plug CodePen io. Go do it. Yes. Sign up for a free account, then sign up for a paid account and make me happy.

[00:55:07] Robbie Wagner: And then let Shepherd guide you.

[00:55:09] Chris Coyier: Yeah. What to the next stage

[00:55:11] Robbie Wagner: in your journey.

[00:55:12] Chris Coyier: Hey, Chuck’s. Right? That’s literally what happens. the onboarding step on anybody if you signed up for CodePen io today.

[00:55:18] Chuck Carpenter: Yep.

[00:55:18] Chris Coyier: What’s gonna happen is that you’re gonna get dumped off into the editor and because we want you to understand what the editor is, it’s kind of the point of using code pen For sure.

[00:55:27] Chris Coyier: And there’s some, there’s like a little bit of a learning curve, like one of these buttons do and all that stuff. If you don’t want to, if you think that’s stuff’s annoying, just close it and that you’ll never see it again. Yeah. You’ve never see it again. But people literally ask us for it. And it’s powered by Shepherd js.

[00:55:40] Chris Coyier: Shepherd JS guides you through it, and it’s like 20 steps or something. We intentionally made it a little beefy for the people that want to, that’s a hardy tour. I respect it. Do it. Yeah. Respect making. Yeah. Thank you. And, uh, yeah, so I’ll, I’ll plug. Plug Shepherd js as well. Cool. It’s part of our, we literally use, it.

[00:55:55] Chris Coyier: Didn’t even give him 50 bucks. I will. You don’t have to. Well,

[00:55:58] Robbie Wagner: when you upgrade to version 14, you [00:56:00] have to, when you upgrade, we’ll talk about common ascension. Yeah. The penalties are bad, but yeah. Yeah. All right. Thanks team.

[00:56:08] Chris Coyier: That was really fun. Thanks.

[00:56:11] Other: Peace.

[00:56:12] Outro: You’ve been watching Whiskey Web and Whatnot. Recorded in front of a live studio audience. What the fuck are you talking about, Chuck? Enjoyed the show? Subscribe. You know, people don’t pay attention to these, right? Head to whiskey.fund for merchant to join our Discord server. I’m serious, it’s like 2% of people who actually click these links. And don’t forget to leave us a five star review and tell your friends about the show. All right, dude, I’m outta here. Still got it.