I remember how basically better auth got a huge lead because lucia was shutdown by its dev for their own reasons which I admittedly have forgotten but they made sense and the community had accepted it.
But those who hadn't started using better auth more. And now I guess its crazy how I felt as if this would be just a small project like lucia in the sense of its just created for the passion and the art, but now it has raised 5 mill$ , I wonder if the community wanted this to be an artisanal like project like lucia before its end or what the community thinks of this move. Since VC and open source have some inherent compromises with each other and I guess I just wanted to write this to hear more about people who are using better auth in prod and what they think of what this VC funding.
This is why I love Lucia. They took the "teach a man to fish" route when they converted to a docs only approach. Now I've got my own auth system and understand a lot more about security.
I wonder how many users of Better Auth are individuals using it for their hobby projects and how many are companies/freelancers making money. Everyone is expecting great software but almost no one is contributing back in any way. If people were supporting such projects, there would be no need for vc money, right?
As an indie hacker using better auth, I’m somewhat skeptical of there now being VC money in the mix (enshittifcation is a process that starts with VC money).
But from my time working for enterprise, they often prefer OSS products that are well-funded for their stacks so they can rely on them for a longer amount of time. So I’d suppose this would help in that regard. Also having a cloak-like SaaS solution might be nice for those who don’t want to host their own infra, though I‘d advise against relying on third parties for auth.
Thanks for your comment! You really nailed as to what sort of discussion I wanted I guess.
I agree so much with the enshittifcation but like, I never understand why atleast open source projects need VC funding/ if they really want to earn money, might as well bootstrap it and try to get some Business customers for support etc.
But if you are saying that to get business customers, I need vc funding, then I guess it forces some enshittifcation.
I am okay with having a SaaS solution but what I truly don't understand is why we need vc funding.
I truly love developers wanting to earn money with open source. I appreciate them because they are essentially giving us gifts and being altruistic and I want to live in a world where people who can, do support them. But I am not okay with is some corporation now deciding the direction to go for open source (and that corporation doesn't care about the craft or the community, they want money.. they want returns since its just a number to them really) and that force of direction really alienates communities and just forks appear and just tbh it becomes messy.
I am more than curious as to why enterprises want VC funded OSS products. Yes you rely on them for a longer amount of time, but it also increases the chances of rugpull quite significantly imo. I don't think that one should just get VC funding just because entreprises like it. Should they?
Maybe I am so alienated with startup culture but I just want anything I build to not burn piles of cash that I need to rely on someone else, and I'd rather be profitable from (day one?) with my own bootstraped company / basically being a indie hacker like you I suppose. I get why some companies need VC funding and they become startups but I don't think that literally everything should be startup I am not sure.
I like this vibe. As a bootstrapped company making money using open source software, I have no issue paying individual devs, I sponsor multiple projects on GitHub. VC funding, however, changes the game: now a project needs to deliver 100x returns just to survive.
I am going to give a guess on this one. I work for a large enterprise and have been involved with evaluating different OSS solutions.
One of the things that tends to come up is support. Now a small OSS startup with no funding and maybe even no way to pay them gets an automatic no in most cases.
My guess is that it is less about VC money and more about “I know I will have someone to call as long as I am willing to pay” kind of thing. VC money tells the company someone else is confident enough about this so I can be too.
Yea, that’s pretty much what I meant as well.
Knowing the project is backed by a significant amount of money makes it a lot easier to rationalize using the product within your stack for the reasons you mentioned. This is usually more spreadsheet-acrobatics than actual reasoning (as is so often the case in enterprise) however, so YMMV for the actual outcome.
But those who hadn't started using better auth more. And now I guess its crazy how I felt as if this would be just a small project like lucia in the sense of its just created for the passion and the art, but now it has raised 5 mill$ , I wonder if the community wanted this to be an artisanal like project like lucia before its end or what the community thinks of this move. Since VC and open source have some inherent compromises with each other and I guess I just wanted to write this to hear more about people who are using better auth in prod and what they think of what this VC funding.