#Future-proofing dagger

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

pine elk
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For those of us who have seen this movie before... can you say anything about concerns that you may take on a bunch of VC funding and end up "enshittified" like Hashicorp, Docker, Bitnami, etc. ?

quartz hemlock
pine elk
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The movie about an innovative open source project that gets infiltrated by venture capitalists, who seduce the founders into hiring additional engineers, eventually requiring more funding. Then the founders get bought out, the license changes and the innovation slows to a crawl.

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And then there is the other movie about a new project which introduces a set of conventions that triggers a network effect among adjacent technologies. The result is an explosion of innovation that creates opportunities for all and everyone ends up better off than they started.

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I've seen both movies.

quartz hemlock
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I don't have enough context to talk about Bitnami (but @stoic turtle worked there so perhaps she can share her experience).

And I can't speak for Hashicorp on the whole licensing change.

I can speak competently on the topic of Docker, though:

  • Docker never changed licensing on any product, ever. So I'm not sure why you're mentioning it alongside Hashicorp.

  • When Docker launched in 2013, it had already raised over $10m in VC money. I'm pretty sure Mitchell and Armond had raised VC money before launching all of their products, except for Vagrant which was Mitchell's personal project. So if you're going to blame VC money for these products getting worse over time in your opinion, it's only fair to credit VC money for these products being great in the first place.

  • It seems obvious to me that Docker, a VC-funded project from its very first day, meets your definition of "introducing a set of conventions that triggers a network effect among adjacent technologies. The result is an explosion of innovation that creates opportunities for all and everyone ends up better off than they started". Docker did that (with VC money), and Dagger plans on doing it again (also with VC money).

I'm happy to talk in more detail about specific issues you have with Docker, and how we plan on addressing or avoiding them with Dagger. I have a whole list of those 🙂

pine elk
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Thank you, yes I agree that was a poor choice of examples.
Docker certainly aligns with the second, happier, movie.
The tragedy of Bitnami was getting acquired and then being left to wither on the vine.
More appropriate examples of the "rug pull" anti-pattern would be Hashicorp, Twitter and Reddit.

quartz hemlock
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OK, thanks for clarifying. I definitely understand the fear of the "rug pull".

quartz hemlock
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My answer to that is pretty simple: a great product is not actually great until it's financially successful. Otherwise, it's just a temporarily great product. Without a path to financial success, it's only a matter of time before the user and customer experience slides back into mediocrity. This can happen to any product, whether it's a VC-backed startup, a hobby project, a government project, a product inside a larger company, etc.

In the case of VC-backed developer tools (our concern here) this means building a viable business, with a plausible path to profitability and growth. There are a lot of ways great VC-backed products can slide into mediocrity (you listed a few here), but they all have the same root cause: lack of a viable business.

So the way we plan on making Dagger not just a great product, but a reliably great product, is by tying that product to a successful business. Until Dagger is financially successful (and I mean revenue, not capital raised!), we will consider it an unfinished product. You can see this reflected, for example, in the relatively rapid launch of our commercial product. We don't want to wait until the open-source engine has massive traction to figure out how to monetize it: monetization is an integral part of product design, so it cannot wait.

Another aspect is capital efficiency: building great software is expensive, and platform software like Dagger is the most expensive software because of its scope and ambition. One of our competitive advantages is access to capital, but equally important is being efficient in how we spend it. Internally we are building a culture of respect for our limited capital. We openly talk with the entire team about our cash position, burn rate, financial forecasts, budgeting constraints etc. The goal is to bake capital efficiency into the culture, so that reaching financial viability becomes a collective goal, instead of something only the "money people" worry about. I think in the new financial climate (higher interest rates, limited access to capital, and more emphasis on efficiency) this will make us even more competitive.

I hope this helps.

pine elk
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Yes.
Yes, it does, thank you!

quartz hemlock
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(made a few last edits 🙂

pine elk
stoic turtle
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As for Bitnami, I agree that VMware didn't do a great job of investing in the team right away, which caused a slowdown in innovation. However, I still know many Bitnami people who are there and still working on Bitnami tech. The Bitnami catalog was renamed VMware Application Catalog, so you'll find improvements they've been working on under that name. It just took them a few years to figure out how to properly navigate the politics within such a big company. 🙂

I have complete trust in the leadership on the Dagger side, though if we were acquired, they would help lead a smooth transition for employees and the Dagger community.