[jimangel]

I completely understand this direction, and really appreciate the work mholt and team has put into Caddy, but I'm disappointed at the same time. I looked forward to spinning up my dumb ideas tied with commerce using Caddy (on a 0 budget).

I've been a Caddy evangelist ever since discovering the powers (auto HTTPS, git webhooks, simple config, etc.), I had plans to write blogs about simple sites for simple ideas that can generate money - but nothing that would allow me to swing $100/mo.

I understand that I can compile the source and remain compliant, however, part of the charm was the simplicity once paired with docker for rapid dev/deployment.

Does anyone know if there's significant pain in maintaining a docker image that compiles source code like Caddy on rebuild?

[codebeaker]

I couldn't agree more. The terms seem overly restrictive.

Let's hope that they don't "go after" anyone who's not compliant and that this is silently a scheme to force bigger companies into compliance and let the rest of us fly under the radar.

As-is, I would owe Caddy $300/month - none of my side projects can sustain that, so I'll be switching back to nginx and some LE cronjobs.

[StavrosK]

Yeah, I have a bunch of side projects that collectively make ~$2/mo. Good thing I didn't replace nginx with Caddy on that server.

[mholt]

No schemes here, just an updated business plan.

If the current pricing is too restrictive for your business, feel free to build from source (Caddy source code is Apache licensed)!

Or contact us, [e-mail], if you need a commercial license but your startup / side project has a constrained budget. We'll see if we can work something out for you.

[mholt]

Thanks for your feedback. Really appreciate it.

> Does anyone know if there's significant pain in maintaining a docker image that compiles source code like Caddy on rebuild?

Yes, Cory specifically is looking into the ability to get custom distro packages and containers through our website for our customers.

Totally understand about bootstrapping a business and the costs there. Feel free to contact us: [e-mail] since your business is just starting out and doesn't have any revenue yet, and we'll see about a custom plan that fits you better.

[jimangel]

Thanks! While I appreciate the offer to work with sales, it really abstracts the simplicity of Caddy (ex: grab this binary, add these couple lines, and BAM you have a site).

I want to shout from the rooftops about Caddy and how awesome it is to effectively roll out side projects. If I had to create a blog post saying "contact sales if you're just starting out" at the end, it would leave a bad taste in my mouth.

An amazing part of the open source tech community is the ability to read a blog post, put the concepts together, and see the light (or not). I've grown so much as a professional by reading blogs, forums, etc and I'd love to give back. Before today, Caddy stripped away the complexities of maintaining a webserver and allowed entrepreneurs to focus on what matters. This move appears to add the complexity back in for those who want to still use it as open source.

Once again, love the work you've done on the project and understand the desire to make money. IMHO a model similar to nginx or an "honor system" (companies generating more than X revenue need to purchase a license) would be better.

[Whitestrake]

> Does anyone know if there's significant pain in maintaining a docker image that compiles source code like Caddy on rebuild?

It's insignificant. Multi-stage Dockerfiles mean you can build from the Golang image, pull mholt/caddy, compile to a binary, then distribute the result in a tiny Alpine image.

I believe the maintainer of the current most popular Caddy image will be going source-compiled, too, so you might not even need to roll your own Dockerfile.

[pepa65]

Where can we find the current most popular Caddy image?

[xj9]

actually yes. i just opened a ticket to base the build on a freedom respecting fork. i've been using this docker build for a while to serve a bunch of sites that i host. i'm in the process of setting up a new build system, but i do push to the docker hub repo regularly.

https://oasis.sandstorm.io/shared/McS6o5vxJ6U4TDjB8jntoVZUtm...

https://source.heropunch.io/relax/gridpkgs/tree/latest/repo/...