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Tailwind Creator on the Challenges of Open Source | The Standup

2025-07-23 Science & Technology
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ThePrimeTime
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Description

Thank You! https://blacksmith.sh our sponsor today! Speed up your GitHub Actions AND pay less! https://tailwindcss.com/sponsor Love Tailwind? Consider Sponsoring! If you want delicious coffee sold only over SSH: ssh terminal.shop 🎙️ Hosts: - TJ @teej_dv - Trash Dev @trash_dev - Prime @ThePrimeagen 🎯 Guest: Adam Wathan - Creator of Tailwind CSS https://adamwathan.me https://x.com/adamwathan https://tailwindcss.com/ 📌 Chapters: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:04 - "Open Source is Pain" - Tailwind Creator 00:04:37 - Sponsor: Blacksmith - Faster GitHub Actions #ad 00:05:15 - The Reality of Open Source at Scale 00:10:55 - Cost of Full-Time Open Source 00:13:06 - Rust Rewrite & Performance Gains 00:16:29 - Sponsorship vs Business Models 00:22:48 - The Emotional Side of Open Source 00:30:15 - The Courage to Fire Users 00:37:46 - How Tailwind Spends Money 00:44:04 - How to Champion Open Source while making money 00:54:06 - Licenses in Open Source 00:58:00 - Tailwind is a hard business 01:00:14 - VC vs Lifestyle Open Source Projects 01:07:50 - Replication in Open Source 01:11:00 - Tailwind Fortnite Skins 01:16:00 - We agree on the words finally 01:18:00 - Thanks & Wrap Up Key topics include: - The reality of maintaining open source at massive scale - Why sponsorship models often fail and what works instead - The psychological challenges of community management - How to build sustainable businesses around open source - The future of developer tooling and AI's impact 🐬 Bonus Section 🐬    ┆ ┆ ┆ ┆ ┆   ┆ ┆ ࣪ ˖☆ ࣪⭑┆ ݁˖ .☆ . ݁ ˖ ☆⊹ ࣪ ┆ ˖ ࣪ ⊹ ࣪ ★ ⋆.˚ ⊹ ࣪ .   ࣪ ˖⋆˚★ ₊ ⊹  ࣪˖ ࣪ ₊ ࣪ ˖  .   ˚ .   . ݁ ⊹ ࣪ ˖    ࣪ ˖    .   ˚ .   *   .    . ݁    ݁   .   ˚   *   .    .   .   ˚ .  *   . *  *   . *   .   *   .  Did you actually read this description?   .   ˚ .   *  . Was it useful?  *  .   ˚ . ˚  . *   .  *   .  *   .  Did it have everything you were looking for?   .    .  . *   .  If you wanted to see something different, what would that be? .    . . *   Do you think Tailwind would have been as popular if it was named Headwind? .   ˚ .   How much Tailwind do you think Prime really knows?  .   ˚ .   *   .  Who do you want to see on The Standup next?   .   ˚   *   . *   .    .   ˚ .   *  .   ˚ . ˚  .    .  .    . . *  .   ˚ .  .  .   ˚ .  .   ˚   *   . *   .  *   .  *   .  *   .  *   .  *   .  *   .  *   .

Top Comments (10)

@spyroslon 2025-07-23

"You should just give away the code. Why are you concerned about making money? This is open source - we should be doing this for the good of humanity. So why aren't you making Tailwind more open and free?" (sry had to..)

424 13 replies
@al3x.4ndru 2025-07-23

it's tough to be an open source dev. $1.15 in donations in 6 months, over 100k weekly installs on npm. And now I get vibe-coded PR's and email spam from AI Agents trying to ask for stuff. It's made me burn out to the point where I haven't comitted in weeks despite active interest

227 21 replies
@JoeBrinkman66 2025-07-23

The really fun part is everyone who has never run a large OSS project telling you all of the ways your project can make money. You know things like - just take donations, or sell a low cost license, or a hundred different shitty ideas that don’t actually generate enough revenue to support a single individual, much less an entire team.

133 4 replies
@scrubmunch5268 2025-07-23

TJs ideas towards the end were very insightful and pragmatic

37
@furacker 2025-07-23

The mad lad said he would do this interview and he really did

31
@scoodah 2025-07-23

Adam is a phenomenal guest. Really enjoyed this episode.

28
@Lognodotdev 2025-07-23

I can't imagine complaining about a lack of features on specifically tailwind. One, it is super polished, and two, if it doesn't have the feature you want, just use css

21
@andrew.derevo 2025-07-23

I wish success to tailwind team, great job guys, you absolutely deserved to be paid ❤

17
@PhilippBlum 2025-07-23

Thank you for getting people up with weight who say the things that have to be said more publicly.

10
@curtself3058 2025-08-16

"Anything's possible with a textarea" is such a good quote.

1

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