On: Launch HN: Opstrace (YC S19) – open-source Datadog

[ensignavenger]

Gitlab is open-core, so that gives them a lot of closed source features to sell. Do you plan to be open-core like Gitlab?

[spahl → ensignavenger]

Yes! We will be having features that you have to pay a subscription for. It starts with the usual suspects: custom SSO, custom domains, and authorization - things that we would be hosting as an ongoing service for customers. Most features will be open when we create them -- this is near and dear to our hearts -- it’s important our users can be successful with the OSS version. Over time, the commercial features will also flow into the open as we release new proprietary ones. Our commercial features will be public in our repo, under a commercial license.

We will also have a managed version where we deploy and maintain it for the customer in a cloud account they provide us.

[erinnh → spahl]

Will you have a small(er) plan for homelabs?

I like supporting open source projects, and while SSO is pretty useless to me, I always like custom domains.

[spahl → erinnh]

We are still experimenting with pricing and what can be open and closed. To be completely transparent we chose custom domains because we know companies care a lot. When we have more features on the commercial side we can start to chat about supporting it in the open version. Still early in our journey, happy to discuss anything, like a small plan with just custom domains. Would you pay for that?

[erinnh → spahl]

Yeah. That’s kind of what I mean. I have no problem paying some money to support you guys and not have to host it on my own. I generally prefer my monitoring etc to not be done by myself anyway cause I take myself offline way too often

Only point was of there was going to be a smaller plan for homelabs or the like that doesn’t have the raw amount of Traffic or features as the enterprise plans do.

[jgehrcke → erinnh]

> cause I take myself offline way too often

Haha, the "ouch, what have I done again?" moment... :-).

One of the most interesting lessons from making mistakes is to appreciate the fact that we make mistakes even when we try so hard not to.

[erinnh → jgehrcke]

No doubt.

I (generally) like taking myself offline. Thats how I learned everything I know (by fucking up). But thats also why I like to have my mail/monitoring outside my own selfhosted infrastructure. Cause those two things are something that should be running 100% of the time. And if I dont feel like fixing whatever I broke right this moment, I like to feel like I dont have to.

Sometimes I just go to bed whenever I broke something and fix it tomorrow. If I have to flick my light switches by hand until then, so be it, I can live with that. But mail and monitoring cant wait that long :P