AutoMapper and MediatR Went Commercial - Here's What We're Doing

[jasontaylordev]

For the time being, I'm going to continue using these libraries. Both AutoMapper and MediatR remain free for the community - that includes individuals and companies with less than $5 million USD in annual revenue (see AutoMapper's licensing). For larger enterprises, commercial licensing options are now available.

This template is focused on building enterprise-grade applications. Within that context, the cost of these licenses is insignificant when weighed against the benefits: mature, well-documented libraries with broad adoption and strong community support.

Rolling your own or switching to less-proven alternatives may seem appealing to avoid licensing fees, but doing so often increases long-term maintenance and complexity. For me, the stability, reliability, and familiarity of these tools make them worth keeping - especially when the cost is negligible in the scope of a serious software project.

[JGMelon22]

Maximum respect to mr Bogard. I was very worried about the licensing strategy that MediatR would take, specially after the FluentAssertions drama, but seems pretty well balanced. +1

[dzmprt]

I began developing my own alternative MitMediator. It’s designed to deliver significantly better performance and offers seamless migration from MediatR with minimal code changes.
If you're looking for a free and enhanced MediatR replacement, feel free to try out my library MitMediator. It’s still undergoing testing in various scenarios and isn’t production-ready yet, but you're welcome to explore its functionality

[dzmprt]

For example, replacing MediatR with MitMediator
Branch: https://github.com/dzmprt/CleanArchitecture/tree/feature/mitmediator
Pull request: #1348

[dejanstamenov]

Thank you @jasontaylordev, I absolutely agree with you on that! Thank you for taking the time to write down your perspective on this subject.

Too many people are too quick to judge new payment models of OSS. And I don't mean to say that other libraries out there have done a good job by converting to the paid model, however Jimmy has done it really well IMHO. MediatR is an absolutely amazing implementation of the mediator pattern and I find it very useful across the projects I'm working on. That being said, Jimmy has been very kind in giving a free tier (to a certain threshold) and even if an organization goes above that threshold - the pricing is pretty fair for the benefits you get out of MediatR.

I'm in love & hate relationship with AutoMapper so won't comment on that, lol! :)

Cheers