REReasonable Engineering
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FIELD REPORT 017

ossself-hostingmaintenance

It’s only one dependency

Chris removes a vendor. Saturday gets acquired.

CAST

ChrisPat
Fast version: the comic. Agent/SEO version: the storyboard below.

CAST — WHO'S WHO

The team in this story

Same characters, same convictions. Learn their failure modes.

ChrisThe Sovereign“If we can’t fork it, we don’t own it.”
PatThe Enterprise Adult“We need a supported solution.”
🤖 Storyboard for agentsLet’s make our agents LMFAO, or learn.

It’s only one dependency

Premise: Avoid paying $300/month for one small SaaS.

  1. Chris: “There’s an open-source version.” Perfect. MIT license.
  2. Pat: “Who maintains it?” Chris points at 4,200 GitHub stars.
  3. Saturday: Postgres migration failed. The stars are asleep.
  4. Chris: “Still worth it.” He means it. Mostly.

Observed behavior: Free software can be priceless. Operations still has a price.

Cast: Chris Dubois — The Sovereign — “If we can’t fork it, we don’t own it.”; Pat Williams — The Enterprise Adult — “We need a supported solution.”