Oskar Dudycz

Pragmatic about programming

We introduced support plans for Marten

2023-11-19 oskar dudyczCoding Life

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We just introduced support plans for Marten, and here’s why.

We’re really committed to providing tools that are accessible, safe and bug-free. We spend hours daily talking with over 800 users on our Discord. I think that we’re doing a decent job on that for free, and we still will.

Why would you want to have a support plan?

Having it is not only about getting top-notch support (which we will) but about having a notion of “I got you covered”, and about building the trust that we won’t disappear and won’t go anywhere, reducing the bus factor. For the enterprise and critical systems, that is extremely important.

For many companies, no paid support means a hobby project, which we’re not. We started our GitHub Sponsors some time ago. We’re already getting some income from our great users, but for many companies, sponsoring is hard to deal with, as procurement processes are not adjusted to that. Companies need invoices, and we fully understand that. That’s where official support can benefit both sides, smoothening the process.

Paid support is also about getting higher priority in resolution, building relationships and solving stuff you typically don’t want to solve through public issues or the Discord channel.

Last but not least, it’s also “help me, help you”. Marten grew big enough that we need to make our work sustainable. We tried many ways:

  • joined the .NET Foundation (and left because it gives no help),
  • set up GitHub sponsors,
  • left our 9 to 5 jobs and ran consulting for more flexible time and focus.

That helped, but we need consulting, and workshops are demanding and time-consuming. We like doing that and helping people this way, but we also need more dedicated time to deliver more value to you.

Most of the comments we get are that our tools just work and do the work. Which, to me, is the best compliment we can get as we’re really trying hard to help our users focus and deliver business value.

Still, that also means that all primary and simple features are already delivered, and the one we have left is complex, time-consuming or both. That means that we need to get a longer span of focus purely on them to do it right. Think blue-green projection rebuilds, better DevOps tooling, observability, UIs, dashboards, etc.

We have a general sustainability issue in the OSS world. Let’s try a simple exercise; try ask yourself the following questions:

  • What is your strategy if such a case happens for your most crucial library?
  • Do you have a dependency management and review strategy?
  • What are you doing to minimise the bus factor for your favourite libraries?

This exercise is just to show that it’s both sides’ relationship.

We aim to be as fair as possible to make it smooth for you. We don’t want to change the license model; we understand that we need to build products, deliver you value and run a regular business-to-business relationship to make it sustainable for both sides.

If you’d like to learn more, check our support plans page and feel free to reach me. We’re here to help you build the best products.

Cheers!

Oskar

p.s. Ukraine is still under brutal Russian invasion. A lot of Ukrainian people are hurt, without shelter and need help. You can help in various ways, for instance, directly helping refugees, spreading awareness, putting pressure on your local government or companies. You can also support Ukraine by donating e.g. to Red Cross, Ukraine humanitarian organisation or donate Ambulances for Ukraine.

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Event-Driven by Oskar Dudycz

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Through my window, I see the result of good plans but poor execution. Opposite my flat, there is a partially completed construction place. Buildings were supposed to be eye-catching Mediterranean style apartments. Delivery date? Two years ago. Actual? More and more unknown.

Some time ago, I heard that using Event Sourcing makes creating Event-Driven Architecture easier. The arguments were correct, that if we’re already publishing events to trigger business workflows, then at some point, we may want to also store events to not lose information. Agreed. However, I also heard that keeping the state as events will simplify things. We’ll have a source of truth with a record of the system behaviour. This will allow, e.g. to confront the results of the operations with the recorded state. I’d agree with that, with one distinction. It’s easier as long as you already know Event Sourcing.

Many people in the DDD community claim that the essential is to properly break down the system into autonomous parts called bounded contexts. Once we have it, the rest is secondary and will sort itself out. For sure.

Many seasoned programmers speak similarly about new technologies. They claim that they can translate past experience into new technologies. That’s true that by analogy, they can catch the big picture quicker. But isn’t it a bold assumption to say that Win.Forms specialist will learn Angular quickly?

The end result may differ a lot from the initial ideas. I saw the plan of those buildings next to me. Now I can see the effects of the execution. Or actually, the lack.

I believe that we should carefully acknowledge not only the point of view of our authorities but also their seating point. If we want to find out how to form a wall, do we ask an architect or a foreman? An architect may know the theory, but the practice is what we’re looking for. On the other hand, if you want to know where to put the wall, you prefer the architect to do measurements. At least if you don’t want to have the roof falling to your head.

After I had torn a ligament in my knee, I went to two qualified orthopedists. One said I should have surgery and do a reconstruction. The second stated that there is no need for that; rehabilitation should be enough. Guess which one had a specialization in surgery and which in rehabilitation?

People usually give us advice from the point where they’re currently standing. They are entitled to a biased view. An architect who rarely does programming will tend to downplay the value of implementation and tactical patterns. Midlevel developers will focus on technicalities instead of the global system impact. The team manager or consultant will emphasize the importance of soft skills (or esoteric techniques known only to them).

The truth is that we need all of them. The excellent plan will fall on the bad execution. The best execution for the wrong case will be just a waste of time. We should carefully evaluate the advice considering what we need and what an expert can give us.

Therefore, when we’re reading an article, watching a talk, let’s also pay attention to the place where the person is standing. The perspective from there may be much different from where we are right now. That can be good, as it may push us in the right direction. But it may also be misleading, as we accidentally take biases of this person without understanding the tradeoffs. Personally, I prefer to follow not only people from pedestal but also those that are closer to my position. A bit further in the journey, but not too far. That helps me to calibrate my view as those people are more relative to my daily struggles.

Polish historical leader Józef Piłsudzki reportedly used to say: “Right is like an ass, everyone has its own”.

Cheers!

Oskar

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