Join the Avalonia Pro Dev Tools Waiting List - Shape the Future of Development! #14097
Replies: 16 comments 73 replies
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This sounds very much like the old Firefox 3D inspector. In which case it sounds like it will be just as nifty.
What does this mean for On another note: I personally feel anything related to debugging should probably stay with in the core project. Good tooling can really help push a FOSS product. Is there also any chance of dual licensing the entire product for open source projects? EG some sort of community edition. |
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I appreciate your concern about the potential for upset within the community. It's crucial to clarify that we're not removing any existing functionalities; instead, we're introducing new, optional paid features to sustain and grow Avalonia. It's also important to recognise that sustainable development requires resources. We've provided a lot of value for free, but we need a more balanced approach to continue. We value all our users, but the sustainability of our project is paramount. Those who have not contributed financially and are voicing discontent must understand that the entire community could lose out without this shift. We're committed to our user base but must ensure Avalonia's longevity. |
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Hey Rob, it's always lovely to hear from you! Let me clarify a few points to address your concerns. Firstly, our stance towards Avalonia XPF as a revenue driver remains unchanged. We continue to see it as an integral contributor to funding the development of Avalonia. Regarding the structure of our operations, we don't operate siloed business units. Our team is compact, and we operate in an integrated manner. The idea that each project must be self-sustaining is not our approach. In fact, we view Avalonia as a foundational element that, while not directly profit-generating, is crucial to our overall ecosystem. It's more of a strategic investment than a standalone business unit. We shared some information about our financials in a previous blog post. That information is now slightly outdated as we closed some additional deals before the EOY.
Last year, our revenue grew by 8.17%, primarily driven by Avalonia XPF. However, we also saw a significant increase in staff costs, which grew by more than 100%. This increase reflects our commitment to investing in Avalonia's future, but you can likely see why we're exploring other avenues for revenue generation. While we have grown our team, we still need more team members to help manage the community's needs effectively. Our strategy and commitment to Avalonia and its ecosystem remain firm. The challenge we face is balancing our growth and investment in the platform with the need to generate sustainable revenue. This balance is critical to ensuring the long-term success and development of Avalonia. |
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I don't have a problem with that. People should be able to be reasonably compensated for the work they do, and this is a struggle many FOSS projects run into when they try to scale. However it's fairly important what gets locked behind the pay wall to ensure the core product (which is free) also remains viable (not just from the point of view of having people commit code). Many other projects have tried doing stuff like this before, and in some cases the company went too far which resulted in the entire project being forked and the fork becoming arguably more popular than the original. I would prefer Avalonia not shoot itself in the foot here by pay walling features some people would consider essential. That said, I am personally fine with some sort of paid advanced control library, kind of like Telerik's, |
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We are not placing core features behind a paywall. The existing DevTools will remain as they are; we're developing an enhanced version for those who want additional features and want to help support Avalonia. It's a valuable addition but entirely optional. We don't see the introduction of optional paid tools as detrimental. On the contrary, it's a strategic step to sustain the project. Our decision to focus on Dev Tools is based on its universal utility, yet it is optional for building Avalonia apps.
Competing with third-party control vendors isn't our goal. We encourage and support other vendors like Actipro in enriching the Avalonia ecosystem. Our focus remains on improving Avalonia and offering valuable tools, ensuring a healthy and diverse ecosystem. |
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@MikeCodesDotNET Thanks for keeping us updated! I agree every viable revenue stream should be investigated and this is a great step. I'm glad you aren't siloing various products and services more. My usage of that term was probably too strong in this case. |
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I agrre, but I think it would be appropriate to make at least this accessible to everyone. |
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There is this one, no idea if it works or not. |
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There is two, the one mentioned above and: https://github.com/npolyak/NP.Ava.UniDock |
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would be cool to "console.log" obervables to track the current value. |
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submitted❤️ |
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My personal opinion: all features of F12 devtools should be available for paying developers only. |
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Visual Studio already includes a tool like the F12 dev tools for free in the community version for WPF apps. |
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In contrast with Visual Studio, which releases its Community Edition under specific restrictions, we have always offered the entirety of Avalonia completely free to our community. Our objective is to generate sufficient revenue, enabling us to invest robustly in Avalonia's future. |
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Indeed, I was just pointing out that it is possible to get similar functionality for free. Although from an individual's point of view there is not much difference between the paid versions and free versions of Visual Studio. Most of the restrictions really only apply to businesses with many employees/lots of revenue and the missing features tend to be fairly advanced/rarely used anyway. |
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Concerning the form, I would move away from requiring a google account to complete it. Any email address should do. As far as the Pro Tools feature list: is this only for a stand-alone tools app or does this include Avalonia features as well?
What does this mean? Is it new controls for Avalonia or allow better UI management of dev tools?
Again, is this only a localized dev tools? Or do you mean accessibility features of Avalonia itself will be behind "pro tools"? If the second, that doesn't sound like a great idea. Localization is a core feature not a nice-to-have tool that those with a budget with be willing to pay for to improve workflows. |
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@thevortexcloud Go ahead and try it without a google account and report back. I suspect there is an option for this though and it was just checked as required for some reason. |
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I just tried it (I did not submit it) and it opens fine. I know some countries have mandated that google require accounts for some things. So it might be a regional thing. |
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Interesting, you might be right about it being a regional thing. I tried it again on a different browser with no cached page data and it requires a login:
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Actually, I also just tried it again on a different browser and also saw it. So I must have just been blocking the popup. |
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It's a stand-alone, totally optional tool.
No. It just means a better UI for Dev Tools, to make debugging the visuals of an app easier.
It'd just be for debugging localisation and accessibility. We won't be removing features from Avalonia. |
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I'm unable to submit:
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Fixed. Try again :) |
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That worked, thank you! |
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Do you have enough information to say whether this tool will be a one-time payment, subscription-based and/or perpetual? |
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Probably a one-time payment with major upgrades requiring an upgrade. |
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Not sure whether any of the above mentioned Pro features would justify for me/us. However, the problem may be that you already provide a lot of things, so it is hard to make it MUCH better. For me anything with testing/trouble shooting would be a critical aspect like F12 tool, VS integration / previewer and help for testing the app. Not sure if that is out of Avalonia ground to support (semi) automated view testing. We had tried Squish once but found that effort vs. return was not good enough for such tests in principle. For i18n it is often a real problem verifying all translated views, hence, more than the pure translation of text, verification of layout et al is a real problem. So you create our custom way to automatically produce all different views and push screenshots into a folder to later verify. Anything you could help with that? XAML hot reaload would be good but if you do your designer properties right, you can try 90% already with the previewer. So not sure if that would be a licenseable game changer. A JetBrains Rider like integration where you can GoTo property from ViewModel to View for VS 2022 would be valuable. Something that helps you optimize your Views. My gout feeling is that often we use too many nested containers to get our layout which may hurt rendering performance. Panels that animate optimally would be great yes, but would that justify extra Pro license? Generally, I would target lowering risk for enterprises like testing, profiling, optimization. But again: what you already provide is very good including F12 tool and previewer. |
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Totally agree: with already great F12 tools, who will buy the pro dev tools? |
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Regarding increasing the support my suggestion is to change the license of the product to dual license. A gpl or lgpl for free and commercial usages. The big companies try to avoid gpl licenses so they will buy and pay for the commercial one with support. Other companies like Qt are sucessfully using this approach and it works. |
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I like that this time I am not the only one bringing it up (again). It potentially is about the right timing. Do not prevent too many users from taking on Avalonia but charge the ones that really profit from Avalonia's existence. Everyone profits because it will become better more quickly. And: give people within an enterprise a clear justification for a purchase request. If paying is optional, justifying purchase requests is harder. |
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@Indomitable, @ilfab - I appreciate your thoughts on licensing. However, a license change is a significant shift and not something we have an appetite for. We must explore all other options before seriously contemplating such a radical change. Our continued success hinges on a broad, diverse community and ecosystem. If our .NET competitors maintain permissive licenses and we don't, it's reasonable to assume users will gravitate towards inferior technologies. Observations from @JimBobSquarePants indicate that even a license change won't resolve the challenges, as businesses appear to be using ImageSharp against the license terms.
Regarding Qt's business model, I'm hazy on the details as it was a long time ago. Still, I recall having a paid license to use Visual Studio before their license alterations. Xamarin followed a similar path, but this isn't a viable option for Avalonia. While we could consider a premium Visual Studio extension, as @ilfab rightly points out, making payment optional complicates justifying purchase requests within enterprises. We've leaned towards an 'open-core' strategy when exploring our business model. This means Avalonia remains freely accessible and open-source while we develop additional, paid features for those interested. The challenge lies in identifying the right value-adds to focus on initially. Several factors influence this decision, including the resources needed for development, market demand, and the impact on the broader ecosystem. Take 'pro' controls as an example: Leaving room for third-party developers in this area is crucial. Creating our own pro controls risks competing with third-party vendors, with whom we've been working hard to nurture relationships with. Finally, the role of AvaloniaUI OÜ (the company) is pivotal in the future of Avalonia. As the principal backer, we invested over half a million euros in its development last year. Success will require transitioning to prioritising enterprise usage and understanding our role as an enterprise software vendor. This evolution means prioritising enterprise customers who can afford our products and services. This strategy will enable us to continue substantial investment in the open-source development of Avalonia. I truly value your insights on these matters. Hearing perspectives that challenge the community's standard views is invaluable. Continue sharing them; we consider each one in our internal discussions. |
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Great insights, Mike! It also came to my mind that licenses may drive users to the next worse choice. Also, the comparisson with Qt is not 100% right:
However, there could be some learning. For licensing they also needed iterative enforcements to make companies buy licenses which may consume quite some effort from Qt company. They have created a decent ecosystem with KDAB at al to allow other business models like teaching and consulting which drove success. So, I see good points to keep an open-core strategy. Minimizing unpaid tool support may be feasable. While a basic previewer is crucial for open-core a smart suite of advanced previewer, F12 tools, profiling..., just everything that makes it less risk could be a thing. Problem is see: you could very well live without that's why licenses would still need to be a no-brainer. Example: I use VS 2022 Enterprise by default but have Rider as the tool to try out stuff on Linux. Expensing the ~300 EUR per year is under the radar. Same for my beloved SmartGit. 100 EUR per year for just the best Git client in the world is a no-brainer... Question is, would that be the case for others as well and would that lead to enough develpers to sign up for such licenses. |
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TL;DRHotReload is kinda expected to be included in every modern UI framework - for free. And HotReload being in the base product may be important for broader adoption that leads to actual Pro Dev Tools license sales. HotReloadI understand the need for providing extra DX features like profiling with a license to sustain this project. And I agree with most points. But one entry on this list concerns me: ExpectationsOn the fist look it may look like HotReload could drive some (significant?) sells as it improves iteration speed dramatically and encourages experimentation. On the other side this is provided by any other free and modern/popular UI framework (Blazor, vue, Flutter,...) - and even WPF - for free. Nowadays, I think, HotReload is kind of expected by any frontend developer to be built into the base - especially so by the "younger generation". I claim this about all platforms out there. Having to restart you application to see changes feels "cluncy" in current times. At least that's my impression. As I first tried Avalonia within the 11 preview timeframe, I was surprised by the lack of HotReload. Extremely excited for Avalonias capabilities but no HotReload: Amazement, Adoption and "Selling it"I think it's fair to say: HotReload amazes developers. And amazed developers are free advocates. In my case, a few years ago in JS land I used Angular and it had some sort of (hacky) module hot reload. But it was not too helpful as it discarded your view-state and was way to coarse in what its update mechanism replaced. Then I learned about vue, tried it and was blown away by actual fine-grained and state persisting fast UI updates. The same amazement struck me when WPF and Xamarin.Forms introduced HotReload (does someone remember LiveXAML/LiveSharp? 🥲). In .NET space I think if someone wants to sell Avalonia to their team which uses/knows WPF, Blazor or MAUI and while discussing it have to admit it doesn't support HotReload, it may be a huge turn-off to the team and seen as a big step back from what they learned to be "just there" and expected. Word-of-Mouth RecommendationYou may say "Well, no turn-off if they can buy a license". There's a catch: I think most technology decisions are driven by members of development teams that have played around with the tech in their spare time where there they have no license (at least in my case/experience). And even if there is a "1Mio revenue/5 devs free" license or something like that, it turns someone off if they know: given their current company (size/bureaucracy/...) they will probably "never" be able to use it professionally. Yes, this company may would have never purchased a license anyway, but there is another point to consider: Playing It SafeThere is the saying "Noone ever got fired for buying IBM/Microsoft/Oracle". Because in the (even theoretical) case of a failure business people will look around and see other (big) players also using this so "this was a sound tool decision". But before someone suggests a "nichy" technology they look around and may refrain to do so despite of technological advantages, because of the lack of "other businesses using it". Dotnet Watch GateYou all remember when HotReload was almost removed in .NET 6 from dotnet watch. There was a huge outcry. Yes, for one because it was already there in a RC with go-live license. But the other big point was that free HotReload is also a big platform seller and again expected to just be there nowadays in a modern platform. Finish & VerdictThis got a little big - and for sure biased - and most stuff I'm sure you already thought about. Still I wanted to explicitly bring this point to the attention of all participants. So, while I can see why this feature is on the Pro Dev Tools list, I think putting it behind a paywall would disappoint expecations, and therefore hamper overall adoption and hence overall license sells. |
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@grokys makes a valid point: hot-reload, a resource-intensive feature, is either a premium offering or unlikely to materialise. Our commitment to transparency means confronting these difficult realities openly. Implementing hot-reload demands substantial effort – an estimated man-year of development. Given our team's limited size, allocating resources for a year on a feature that doesn't directly enhance revenue is impractical. Our priority is ensuring Avalonia's ongoing development, necessitating tough choices. The persistent interest in hot-reload and calls for it to be free reinforces our decision to include it as part of a paid offering. This approach aligns with our need to generate revenue while acknowledging the feature's value to our users. |
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@MikeCodesDotNET One this I'd like to add to this is that a feature that starts as a paid offering does not need to remain there indefinitely. Something I have seen work well with Visual Studio is how they move features from the premium and enterprise versions down into the community edition over time. |
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@RusselRillema, your suggestion merits consideration, but I'm inclined to keep certain features as paid, while continuously adding more value to our paid users. Our situation is distinct from Visual Studio, which enjoys a revenue of about $20 million per month. I assure you, if we ever approach such figures, we'll shift towards making features free by default, reflecting our success and commitment to the community. |
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That's hard to judge but currently vue.js has 42.5k GitHub stars and Avalonia has 22.6k GitHub stars - so by this metric vue.js is only 2x more popular. Of course the web ecosystem is much larger than the .NET ecosystem so this probably doesn't reflect reality, but I also suspect that part of the issue is that the web ecosystem is more used to funding OSS projects than the .NET ecosystem who expect everything to be provided for free by a multi-billion dollar corporation. |
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I dont know but I find this hot reload thing here much overrated. Yes, it can help in certain aspects but very often you still need to change ViewModel or similar. Given the effort for such a thing and given the provided alternatives like powerful previewer I would not invest into that. Personally I believe its not a relevant benefit having it at all. |
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How about enhanced support for C# Markup 2 for AvaloniaUI in the dev tools? In 2024, a first class C# UI development experience is just as much an expected core feature as c# hot reload. E.g:
Of course you would have to include C# Markup 2 in the core product. Currently, C# Markup 2 is a polished release for Uno Platform, but without dev tools. It already contains a WPF prerelease version... |
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To avoid converters, we can extend Bindings syntax, allowing chaining method calls there. As it was done in UWP x:Bind. For example. |
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Ok. Have not used that. I guess where it gets on your nerves is when you want Visible = (myEnum == MyEnum.MyValue) or so. So, really short ones. If there was a way to do that in XAML, great. For more complex things the converter "workaround" is not a deal breaker and then after some time, you typically have your set of converters implemented, right? |
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You sort of can? You can do this https://docs.avaloniaui.net/docs/reference/styles/style-selector-syntax#by-property-match Not sure if it works with enums though. |
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Ok. Styles would work. Not to have to use a Style but just setting the property sometimes would be less texty but seems good enough. Anyhow, as always kind of getting into details where we wanted to find "features" enterprise users would pay for :-) |
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c# markup has always seemed pointless to me, xaml is much easier to code with IMHO |
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What about building tools (at least some of them) that also work with XPF/WPF, not just Avalonia? That gives you a much bigger customer base for paid tools, presumably with more revenue. It can also provide an on-ramp for current WPF devs to use you first for the tools then later potentially for XPF/Avalonia, when they want to go to other platforms beyond Windows. |
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We had ideas to share Avalonia dev tools with XPF, yes. It likely won't support WPF though. |
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I think this is a great idea @MikeCodesDotNET. I guess it would be subscription based. But do you have an indication of how much you guys will ask for? |
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We are trying to estimate a good pricing rn. Please fill the waiting list form, it asks for the price you would think is okay for such package. The more feedback we get, the better we can estimate a good price level. |
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I wish the dotnet foundation would actual give money to OSS instead of providing build services and legal support. |
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@florianwachs, discussing the .NET Foundation's effectiveness could fill a lengthy thread. To put it succinctly, as it stands, the Foundation offers no real value to its member projects. |
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totally agree, it just seems to me that a dotnet "apache" foundation would be helpful. I really think your best bet is a paid pro devtool. i hope enough people sign up for the waitlist. I have no current avalonia projects but I would definitely get a license. We need a flutter competitor in the dotnet world, especially when running in the WASM world. |
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I would also get licenses for each UI devolper in our group |
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Make it as easay to deploy on the Mac App Store as it is on the Microsoft App Store and I'll move all my development over to AvaloniaUI and pay the subscription. |
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We're thrilled to share that we've started on our first Avalonia-focused paid product - Avalonia Pro Dev Tools. While it's still in its infancy, we need your insights and support to determine its future.
About Avalonia Pro Dev Tools
Our vision for the Pro version includes a suite of advanced features designed to improve your development experience. Below is a first draft of what we're looking to include, though we'd love to get your feedback on anything else you'd love to see:
Your Role in Shaping Pro Dev Tools
We're still exploring this project's feasibility, timelines, and market potential. Your participation at this stage is crucial. By joining the waiting list, you're not just expressing interest; you're helping us shape the tool that could redefine your development experience.
How to Join the waitlist
Head over to our Google Form to join the waiting list. This commitment is just a show of interest - no obligations, no immediate costs, but we'll use the list to give early access for testing and feedback. We're gathering data to make informed decisions about this project's future.
Let's build the future of development tools together. Your opinions matter to us!
Cheers,
Mike J
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