For me it is not the right move, one thing is letting users know Laravel Cloud is an option and another one is removing any alternative from the text
boothby 5 minutes ago [-]
When the early adopters start pushing neural implants they'll be ad-free. Not long after your boss insists that everybody needs neural implants for the sake of productivity, they'll be ad-supported but moneyed developers will be able to opt out. The terms of the ad-free service will continue shifting, so nothing is ever really ad-free for long, and ads for better neural implants are promotions not ads right? But y'all are working on neural implants because if you don't, somebody else will, aren't you
mfrieswyk 4 minutes ago [-]
> I'm not a Laravel developer and don't generally use PHP apart from one small side project where Claude takes care of the coding for me anyway. I've never tried Laravel Cloud so I don't know whether it fits into either of the descriptions above.
sschueller 2 minutes ago [-]
Thankfully I went with Symfony. Non of this VC funding crap. Clear release timelines and how breaking changes are introduced.
otikik 18 minutes ago [-]
> Do we let people feed ads to our agents?
"Our" agents?
ceejayoz 37 minutes ago [-]
Ooof. Yeah, this is not a good sign. I enjoy Laravel (and even Laravel Cloud), but this clearly doesn't belong in Boost.
typia 10 seconds ago [-]
This is PHP
p_stuart82 5 minutes ago [-]
tbh the craziest part is you're the one paying the api token costs to feed this ad into your own context window
pinter69 11 minutes ago [-]
Interesting, thanks for the reference. I wonder what other products do this
bakugo 3 minutes ago [-]
On one hand, I hate how much of a hype-driven commercial product Laravel is, and how many novice developers learn bad practices from its awful architecture.
On the other hand, this "problem" only affects vibe coders who weren't writing any code themselves anyway, so I say let them suffer.
password4321 17 minutes ago [-]
I love this. Let the clankers pay the bills.
MarcelOlsz 4 minutes ago [-]
I only had to wait 8 years but I can finally text my old co-worker that Laravel is in fact, shit.
artursapek 26 minutes ago [-]
Avoid VC funding at all costs
shevy-java 29 minutes ago [-]
By the way, one quick comment:
> By contrast, Ruby on Rails is backed by a foundation that launched with about $1M from sponsors like Shopify and GitHub.
So, not disagreeing on this being an issue for Laravel abusing users, but in particular the role of Shopify in the ruby ecosystem is, in my opinion (and that of many others) a net-negative. Look at how many ruby developers got ultimately fired when rubygems.org (ok, not rubygems.org but RubyCentral, but they now control rubygems.org and the main moderator on ruby reddit is an employee of RubyCentral, thus a conflict of interest exists now on ruby reddit) decided it must become a shopify-corporation project only.
sixhobbits 23 minutes ago [-]
Author here, I was actually surprised to learn this too. I reached for Ruby and Django as examples of non commerical frameworks and before writing this I didn't know about the $1M backing either.
I guess I'd have a hard time turning down that kind of money for something I cared about so no judgement to the creators who make the choices but I do think it's something we need to understand the effects of as community members
ptdorf 11 minutes ago [-]
Another one bits the dust.
shevy-java 31 minutes ago [-]
We need ublock origin EVERYWHERE.
I actually wrote this before on reddit, before I eventually
left reddit due to the censorship. KDE changed a lot and Nate
asked for donations via a daemon. I pointed out that we now
need to undo pester-ads added by KDE developers. Lo and behold,
I was cancelled on #kde reddit. I still think we need something
like ublock origin but for EVERYTHING, not just the browser.
ublock origin is great for browsers, but there is a lot more
that should be filtered away; take bad UI choices made by
upstream, not even an ad. Some software allows fine-tuning,
where the user can customize the project a bit (firefox UI
for instance, you can modify it). We need this on the whole
operating system level, not just the browser. That way, as
a convenient side effect, Laravel could no longer abuse users
like that.
I live an ad-free life (well, digital life ... in reallife I
still get pointless ads shown). I think every human being
should have the option to not have to see ANY ads. The more
the industry complains about it, the more I censor away
such ad-monsters.
p4bl0 17 minutes ago [-]
I also block ads everywhere I can, but I have to admit that an open source project such as KDE showing once a year a simple text notification asking their users to consider making a donation has nothing to do with a commercial ads in my opinion.
mwalser 9 minutes ago [-]
I'm using KDE as my daily driver and haven't noticed any ads so far. Where can I find these pester-ads?
Every time tech invents something amazing, the enshittification follows shortly thereafter.
gjsman-1000 35 minutes ago [-]
“How dare a guy work on technology for 1.248 million minutes, take VC funding gambling that he can improve the ecosystem for everyone using it, and then have the audacity, the unmitigated gall, to ask me to consider his products with it only taking one minute for me to opt out!”
The headline wasn't "Taylor Otwell bought a Lambo in 2022 and now injects ads...".
VCs typically want a return on their 57 million dollar investment.
hiccuphippo 2 minutes ago [-]
And that's the start of the enshittification.
ceejayoz 20 minutes ago [-]
> VCs typically want a return on their 57 million dollar investment.
And people warned about this when they announced it.
This is a sign those warnings were valid.
mns 15 minutes ago [-]
It's the way he's doing it. The entire ecosystem is just one giant ad for various paid projects. It's one thing to offer paid services, there are users out there that want to use them or need to use them, that's not the issue. From my perspective Laravel became a huge ad with purposely bad documentation that ends up directing unknowing users into using features, libraries and products that will lead them into paying for things that they might not need. Everything in Laravel recently is set up so that users folow documentation and best practices to end up using whatever subscriptions and paid products they offer (and then in some case pull the plug on them and come up with something new, abandoning whatever UI library they made people buy 1 year ago).
embedding-shape 30 minutes ago [-]
> that he can improve the ecosystem for everyone using it [...] to ask me to consider his products with it only taking one minute for me to opt out
Seems you misunderstand the issue. Anyone not deploying to Laravel Cloud but using that project seems to be impacted by this, even going so far that agents are confused about it and keeps insisting users should deploy to Laravel Cloud instead.
Maybe I'm a grumpy old developer, but that does not sound like "improve the ecosystem for everyone using it", sounds like good old spam taken to the next level.
gjsman-1000 26 minutes ago [-]
Yes, you're a grumpy old developer.
Taylor Otwell has been full-time on Laravel since 2015. 260 work days per year, 8 hours per day, for a decade = 1.248 million minutes.
And you're complaining it's spam that he's inconvenienced you into adding a sentence to your agents file. This, right here, is why I will never write open-source software of any significant size.
embedding-shape 5 minutes ago [-]
> And you're complaining it's spam that he's inconvenienced you into adding a sentence to your agents file.
I don't care how something happened, I care about the results. If you do stuff to my tooling that makes it less efficient, I'm gonna not like that, regardless how many minutes you spent on something, or if it's FOSS or not.
If you can't handle feedback from developers about what you're doing to their environment then please, do not write and publish open-source software, you'll be doing us all a favor.
ceejayoz 24 minutes ago [-]
Laravel has been apparently profitable for quite some time; they've long had a paid ecosystem with things like Forge, Vapor, paid components, etc.
I don't think it's unfair to be wary of the shift to VC funding and stuff like this that really feels like it wouldn't have been a thing prior to that.
diehunde 14 minutes ago [-]
You should use seconds to make it even more dramatic
sixhobbits 20 minutes ago [-]
He has no obligations to us as we did not pay him, but we also have the right to call out stuff we think is wrong as he didn't pay us
gjsman-1000 13 minutes ago [-]
That's called a parasitic relationship. Think about it:
1. I have the right to take as I please
2. I have the right to criticize the giver as I please
3. The giver has zero right to take from me in any way
I think that's morally repugnant. If this is what open source means, I'm joining Microsoft and I will be the one writing the Halloween papers.
cwillu 6 minutes ago [-]
If you don't like it, don't release software under that license.
FatherOfCurses 18 minutes ago [-]
"How dare people want to spend a portion of their lives not being advertised to."
There are plenty of ways to promote your product. Injecting ads into agents and PR's is not the way to do it.
jlarocco 25 minutes ago [-]
He didn't have to give it away for free and turn to adware.
I understand that he wants to get paid for his work, but he can charge for it like everybody else. No need to be a asshole by building the product for "free" and then bundling ad-ware.
8 minutes ago [-]
Rendered at 15:39:14 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
For me it is not the right move, one thing is letting users know Laravel Cloud is an option and another one is removing any alternative from the text
"Our" agents?
On the other hand, this "problem" only affects vibe coders who weren't writing any code themselves anyway, so I say let them suffer.
> By contrast, Ruby on Rails is backed by a foundation that launched with about $1M from sponsors like Shopify and GitHub.
So, not disagreeing on this being an issue for Laravel abusing users, but in particular the role of Shopify in the ruby ecosystem is, in my opinion (and that of many others) a net-negative. Look at how many ruby developers got ultimately fired when rubygems.org (ok, not rubygems.org but RubyCentral, but they now control rubygems.org and the main moderator on ruby reddit is an employee of RubyCentral, thus a conflict of interest exists now on ruby reddit) decided it must become a shopify-corporation project only.
I guess I'd have a hard time turning down that kind of money for something I cared about so no judgement to the creators who make the choices but I do think it's something we need to understand the effects of as community members
I actually wrote this before on reddit, before I eventually left reddit due to the censorship. KDE changed a lot and Nate asked for donations via a daemon. I pointed out that we now need to undo pester-ads added by KDE developers. Lo and behold, I was cancelled on #kde reddit. I still think we need something like ublock origin but for EVERYTHING, not just the browser. ublock origin is great for browsers, but there is a lot more that should be filtered away; take bad UI choices made by upstream, not even an ad. Some software allows fine-tuning, where the user can customize the project a bit (firefox UI for instance, you can modify it). We need this on the whole operating system level, not just the browser. That way, as a convenient side effect, Laravel could no longer abuse users like that.
I live an ad-free life (well, digital life ... in reallife I still get pointless ads shown). I think every human being should have the option to not have to see ANY ads. The more the industry complains about it, the more I censor away such ad-monsters.
[1] https://pointieststick.com/2024/08/28/asking-for-donations-i...
I really don't think he's hurting for funds.
VCs typically want a return on their 57 million dollar investment.
And people warned about this when they announced it.
This is a sign those warnings were valid.
Seems you misunderstand the issue. Anyone not deploying to Laravel Cloud but using that project seems to be impacted by this, even going so far that agents are confused about it and keeps insisting users should deploy to Laravel Cloud instead.
Maybe I'm a grumpy old developer, but that does not sound like "improve the ecosystem for everyone using it", sounds like good old spam taken to the next level.
Taylor Otwell has been full-time on Laravel since 2015. 260 work days per year, 8 hours per day, for a decade = 1.248 million minutes.
And you're complaining it's spam that he's inconvenienced you into adding a sentence to your agents file. This, right here, is why I will never write open-source software of any significant size.
I don't care how something happened, I care about the results. If you do stuff to my tooling that makes it less efficient, I'm gonna not like that, regardless how many minutes you spent on something, or if it's FOSS or not.
If you can't handle feedback from developers about what you're doing to their environment then please, do not write and publish open-source software, you'll be doing us all a favor.
I don't think it's unfair to be wary of the shift to VC funding and stuff like this that really feels like it wouldn't have been a thing prior to that.
1. I have the right to take as I please
2. I have the right to criticize the giver as I please
3. The giver has zero right to take from me in any way
I think that's morally repugnant. If this is what open source means, I'm joining Microsoft and I will be the one writing the Halloween papers.
There are plenty of ways to promote your product. Injecting ads into agents and PR's is not the way to do it.
I understand that he wants to get paid for his work, but he can charge for it like everybody else. No need to be a asshole by building the product for "free" and then bundling ad-ware.