Sentry is great. I help develop an open source game engine and they have given us a free team license for their product since it is open source. They've been invaluable for fighting crashes and regressions.
This is a great initiative, but one wonders to which degree this is mostly a marketing stunt, white-washing their own "fair source" efforts.
Sentry is a multi-billion company, and Open Source pays exactly none of their bills (though it may serve other purposes). This leads to pages such as [1] where they actively steer users away from self-hosting their "open source" (in name only) solution.
Much has been said about Sentry's switch to "Fair Source"[2], but for me personally, the ship of "open source in name only" sailed long before that with the ever-increasing complexity of managing your own setup.[3] It’s clear that the priority here has shifted to pushing users toward their hosted, paid plans. Business models beat licenses every time if you want to understand actual intentions.
Disclaimer: I am the solo-everything at a competitor, which is in fact _not_ Open Source.[4]
By this logic, should companies never donate to open source because any contribution could be labeled as marketing? The $750K will have real, tangible benefits for open source projects regardless of Sentry's motivations. It's a net positive. And we all know how many profitable companies built on open source give nothing back at all.
The point about "open source in name only" due to hosting complexity overlooks that this is a natural consequence of the product's evolution, not malicious intent. Enterprise-grade scaling of such monitoring requires sophisticated infrastructure. Suggesting they should artificially keep it simple for self-hosters would hold back product development.
It's only natural evolution in an environment in which there is no price for self-hosters giving up, which brings us back to the point I made originally :-)
I agree about the real, tangible benefits for open source. But wouldn't you agree there's at least _some_ point on the scale of evil where donor motivations can be questioned?
Sentry has been donating significantly for years now.
It's definitely marketing, otherwise they wouldn't be publishing the blog article - but what you're insinuating doesnt hold up considering the timeline
But what is the sense to compare on a single feature? Obviously, Django doesn't cover 100% of use cases but, usually, you choose a technology that simplify you live overall not on specific aspects.
Django is the community we are historically very attached to because that's what sentry is written in. The numbers in what we give to open source do not correlate with our business interests or strategies. Python is not the largest sentry consumer base :)
That is also why Rust and rrweb are overrepresented.
Sentry is great. I help develop an open source game engine and they have given us a free team license for their product since it is open source. They've been invaluable for fighting crashes and regressions.
I had the great pleasure of processing Sanity's donations to open source projects too. Hope other companies follow suit!
This is a great initiative, but one wonders to which degree this is mostly a marketing stunt, white-washing their own "fair source" efforts.
Sentry is a multi-billion company, and Open Source pays exactly none of their bills (though it may serve other purposes). This leads to pages such as [1] where they actively steer users away from self-hosting their "open source" (in name only) solution.
Much has been said about Sentry's switch to "Fair Source"[2], but for me personally, the ship of "open source in name only" sailed long before that with the ever-increasing complexity of managing your own setup.[3] It’s clear that the priority here has shifted to pushing users toward their hosted, paid plans. Business models beat licenses every time if you want to understand actual intentions.
Disclaimer: I am the solo-everything at a competitor, which is in fact _not_ Open Source.[4]
[1] https://sentry.io/resources/self-hosted-vs-cloud/ (click on pdf for scary pictures)
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41171665
[3] https://github.com/getsentry/sentry/ commit/78bc759d1be4fa6b8ae3e2764e7156e05eb22ab9
[4] https://www.bugsink.com/
By this logic, should companies never donate to open source because any contribution could be labeled as marketing? The $750K will have real, tangible benefits for open source projects regardless of Sentry's motivations. It's a net positive. And we all know how many profitable companies built on open source give nothing back at all.
The point about "open source in name only" due to hosting complexity overlooks that this is a natural consequence of the product's evolution, not malicious intent. Enterprise-grade scaling of such monitoring requires sophisticated infrastructure. Suggesting they should artificially keep it simple for self-hosters would hold back product development.
It's only natural evolution in an environment in which there is no price for self-hosters giving up, which brings us back to the point I made originally :-)
I agree about the real, tangible benefits for open source. But wouldn't you agree there's at least _some_ point on the scale of evil where donor motivations can be questioned?
Sentry has been donating significantly for years now.
It's definitely marketing, otherwise they wouldn't be publishing the blog article - but what you're insinuating doesnt hold up considering the timeline
Love to see it. Glad to see PHP getting more support here
They gave the most to the python community at 46500.
They must have the most inroads there, I imagine.
Sentry is written in Python and uses Django.
What are the advantages of using Django over FastAPI in 2024?
What's the advantages of using FastAPI over Django Ninja?
But to answer your question more realistically:
* Familiarity
* Easy/built-in admin
* Longevity
I would also never consider switching an existing app from one to the other.
Sentry started in 2008, FastAPI didn't exist until 2018.
Batteries included, easy to start and very fast to develop, tons of packages and resources ...
FastAPI make sense only if you write an api for a third party frontend or service.
does Django have first party support for 2 factor authentication yet?
There are packages like django-oauth-toolkit.
But what is the sense to compare on a single feature? Obviously, Django doesn't cover 100% of use cases but, usually, you choose a technology that simplify you live overall not on specific aspects.
What do you mean by "most inroads"?
Adoption and/or dependency
Django is the community we are historically very attached to because that's what sentry is written in. The numbers in what we give to open source do not correlate with our business interests or strategies. Python is not the largest sentry consumer base :)
That is also why Rust and rrweb are overrepresented.
[flagged]
oh no! an organization uplifting marginalized communities!!!1! we are being oppressed now!!
>marginalized communities
Like the CEO's of Google, IBM and Microsoft?
> CEO's of Google, IBM and Microsoft
Are Indian Americans, not American Indians. The are not part of the demographic Outreachy caters to.
Don't you see how racist those programs are?