Comment on Friendly reminder that Tailscale is VC-funded and driving towards IPO

lefixxx@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• Uncut_Lemon@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Steam is a private company, not publicly traded and has no VC funding.

  VC funding and potential IPO normally means enshittification is inevitable, as eventually needs to make insane profits by turning the screws on its users, as their business model wasn’t self sustaining.

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  • lefixxx@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Enshittification is inevitable for all free services (services as in with a server component). Thankfully the functions of tailscale are open source so until enshittification actually happens I will be happy with using a a useful but VC funded project. When I am not willing to make the trade off anymore I will use headscale or some other drop in replacement.

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    • splendoruranium@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Enshittification is inevitable for all free services (services as in with a server component).

      No, it is not that bleak. It is only inevitable when there is an active push for a short-term maximization of user base monetization (which is very much in the nature of VC). It can usually be avoided with products that are wholly under the ownership of all users (such as a cooperative or a government-provided service) or - only if one is lucky - with products of financially independent private enterprises under vaguely benevolent and unhurried leadership (such as Steam, to some extent)

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    • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Realistically Tailscale seems to currently be running on a model of get all of the self hosters to love running it at home so then they advocate to run it at work where all of the pricey enterprises licenses make the real money.

      I’ve actually seen some real world usecases where if I had more political push, I would’ve put Tailscale onto the running as a potential solution

      Hopefully they have the right people in place to push back at the VC firms about maintaining their current strategy rather than scaring away all of their best advocates before they can truly get off the ground. Having worked at a company owned by a hedgefund, part of the trick is having the right people in place in the company who can block the worst decisions by the capital-hungry owners

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