I'm not GP, but I agree with them. I'm totally willing to pay (I bought Tailwind UI in fact) but if the license is restrictive in what I can do with it, I won't invest time/money into learning it. If I can't use it on an open source project I built (not a UI library of course) then it's unacceptable. If I can't use it on things I build for customers, it's unacceptable. It's not the money that is the problem for me with the premium offerings, it's the license terms.
To be clear, I'm speaking broadly in general terms. I'm not suggesting that Pines has this problem.
> They do have a catch all, but for PR sake they probably won’t use that unless you’re clearly in the wrong.
If you're relying on PR then what's the point in the licence? This is a legal agreement - it should be scoped for intended meaning of the agreement, not relying on outside influences to decide how the company will choose to interpret it because those influences change over time.
The catch all here is "Use the Components and Templates to produce anything that may be deemed by Tailwind Labs Inc, in their sole and absolute discretion, to be competitive or in conflict with the business of Tailwind Labs Inc.". What happens if I use Tailwind to build a site designer service? For a while it'll be fine, but what happens if Tailwind (the company) bring out a site designer product, and now decide that I'm in competition? Is my whole business dead? There's no caveats in that clause on time limits, ordering, or in fact anything. It doesn't even have to be a close competitor due to the "sole and absolute discretion" wording.
Yep, tailwind is pretty good on that front. I paid in part because they're fine with open sourcing and using for customer projects and such. I haven't used it as much as I thought, but overall a good investment.
I would absolutely be willing to pay under the right circumstances but I have a short fuse when it comes to licenses and component libraries.
When component libraries doesn't rely on anything proprietary, isn't complex, has convoluted/restrictive licenses, is expensive or a subscription and meanwhile could absolutely be done 100% open source, then of course I'd prefer that.
The whole point of these libraries is to make building products easier, but restrictive licenses & expensive pricing makes it feel like that won't be the case.
Also, as far as I can see, the library shared here is completely free.