Friendly reminder that Tailscale is VC-funded and driving towards IPO
-
Join our Discord server for a chat and community support.
Sigh...
And even worse:
Everything in Tailscale is Open Source, except the GUI clients for proprietary OS (Windows and macOS/iOS), and the control server.
Huh, I actually didn't know this because I don't use Windows/macOS/iOS. Somehow completely missed this.
-
I get all of that. I really do feel ya. However, I find it quite difficult to raise my ire over a free product (Tailscale) that I use in conjunction with my hobby, changing up their game and going IPO. I guess I do not take my network as seriously as others here do.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Not so much ire than awareness and planning so we don't get caught pants down. I've been using them for 5 years, in part because their clients (for my OSes) are open source and there was a path out of their infrastructure. I paid for it and have a pretty elaborate setup which supports services for family and friends. I've been happy so far, but will be decoupling from their infrastructure. No ire for them, just for the system. The system makes people and firms do what they do.
-
Netbird seemed to go in a similar way, though still good. I want to try zrok next, looks interesting
What do you mean by going in a similar way? Towards an IPO?
-
Tailscale/headscale/wire guard is different from a normal vpn setup.
VPN: you tunnel into a remote network and all your connections flow through as if youâre on that remote network.
Tailscale: your devices each run the daemon and basically create a separate, encrypted, dedicated overlay network between them no matter where they are or what network they are on. You can make an exit node where network traffic can exit the overlay network to the local network for a specific cidr, but without that, youâre only devices on the network are the devices connected to the overlay. I can setup a set of severs to be on the Tailscale overlay and only on that network, and it will only serve data with the devices also on the overlay network, and they can be distributed anywhere without any crazy router configuration or port forwarding or NAT or whatever.
And on Unraid you can add individual docker containers to the tailnet too.
So you can just go ssh <container> on any device in the Tailnet and itâll connect
-
Vps can be really inexpensive, I pay $3 a month for mine
~$1.91 a month (paid 22.99 for a year) at racknerd!
-
Join our Discord server for a chat and community support.
Sigh...
And even worse:
Everything in Tailscale is Open Source, except the GUI clients for proprietary OS (Windows and macOS/iOS), and the control server.
To be fair, anything the GUI clients do can be done with the CLI which is still open source and on all desktop platforms and headscale is literally their open source control server.
-
Corporate VPN startup Tailscale secures $230 million CAD Series C on back of âsurprisingâ growth
Pennarun confirmed the company had been approached by potential acquirers, but told BetaKit that the company intends to grow as a private company and work towards an initial public offering (IPO).
âTailscale intends to remain independent and we are on a likely IPO track, although any IPO is several years out,â Pennarun said. âMeanwhile, we have an extremely efficient business model, rapid revenue acceleration, and a long runway that allows us to become profitable when needed, which means we can weather all kinds of economic storms.â
Keep that in mind as you ponder whether and when to switch to self-hosting Headscale.
Headscale requires tailscale client so itâs a no-go for me. Iâm still trying to block cloudflare from my network.
-
Corporate VPN startup Tailscale secures $230 million CAD Series C on back of âsurprisingâ growth
Pennarun confirmed the company had been approached by potential acquirers, but told BetaKit that the company intends to grow as a private company and work towards an initial public offering (IPO).
âTailscale intends to remain independent and we are on a likely IPO track, although any IPO is several years out,â Pennarun said. âMeanwhile, we have an extremely efficient business model, rapid revenue acceleration, and a long runway that allows us to become profitable when needed, which means we can weather all kinds of economic storms.â
Keep that in mind as you ponder whether and when to switch to self-hosting Headscale.
Yeah and steam is closed source DRM platform. Great software sometimes is worth the trade off.
-
What do you mean by going in a similar way? Towards an IPO?
Maybe not ipo, but it seemed like it had a strong monetisation push a while ago
-
I just replaced my entire setup with base wireguard as a challenge, easier than I expected it to be, and not hard to mimic tailscale.
Any helpful guids or links you feel like sharing for interested parties?
-
Yeah and steam is closed source DRM platform. Great software sometimes is worth the trade off.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Steam is a private company, not publicly traded and has no VC funding.
VC funding and potential IPO normally means enshittification is inevitable, as they will eventually need to make insane profits by turning the screws on its users, as their business model wasn't self sustaining.
-
I just replaced my entire setup with base wireguard as a challenge, easier than I expected it to be, and not hard to mimic tailscale.
Can you elaborate how?
-
Can you elaborate how?
Pihole and pivpn get along like peas and carrots.
Make the "available ips" your pivpn subnet and ta-da, the mesh functionality of tailscale without the entire connection.
Want to exit node from the server? Just change the value back to 0.0.0.0/0.
-
How does WG work on the local side of the network? Do you need to connect each VM/CT to the wireguard instance?
I am currently setting up my home network again, and my VPS will tunnel through my home network and NPM will be run locally on the local VLAN for services and redirect from there.
I wonder if there is any advantage to run NPM on the VPS instead of locally?
wrote last edited by [email protected]The vps is the wg server and my home server is a client and it uses pihole as the dns server. Once your clients hang around for a minute, their hostnames will populate on pihole and become available just like TS.
You do have to set available ips to wg's subnet so your clients don't all exit node from the server, so you'll be able to use 192.168.0.0 at home still for speed.
As for NPM, run it on the proxy, aim (for example) Jellyfin at 10.243.21.4 on the wg network and bam.
-
Steam is a private company, not publicly traded and has no VC funding.
VC funding and potential IPO normally means enshittification is inevitable, as they will eventually need to make insane profits by turning the screws on its users, as their business model wasn't self sustaining.
Enshittification is inevitable for all free services (services as in with a server component). Thankfully the functions of tailscale are open source so until enshittification actually happens I will be happy with using a a useful but VC funded project. When I am not willing to make the trade off anymore I will use headscale or some other drop in replacement.
-
Corporate VPN startup Tailscale secures $230 million CAD Series C on back of âsurprisingâ growth
Pennarun confirmed the company had been approached by potential acquirers, but told BetaKit that the company intends to grow as a private company and work towards an initial public offering (IPO).
âTailscale intends to remain independent and we are on a likely IPO track, although any IPO is several years out,â Pennarun said. âMeanwhile, we have an extremely efficient business model, rapid revenue acceleration, and a long runway that allows us to become profitable when needed, which means we can weather all kinds of economic storms.â
Keep that in mind as you ponder whether and when to switch to self-hosting Headscale.
Crap, I really need to switch of Tailscale but currently it is an easy way for me to access my stuff outside of home as a temporary solution while I am on a 5G modem.
-
Crap, I really need to switch of Tailscale but currently it is an easy way for me to access my stuff outside of home as a temporary solution while I am on a 5G modem.
I can recommend to take a look at netbird.io
-
You really don't though. I use wireguard myself under the same scenario without issue. You just need to use some form of dynamic DNS to mitigate the potentially changing IP. Even if you're using Tailscale you'll still need to have something running a service all the time anyways, so may as well skip the proxy.
If you only need to worry about the IP changing, then your ISP is not using NAT, or CGNAT as it is better known. I'm pretty sure that you can also use port forwarding, which is not commonly available under CGNAT.
-
Enshittification is inevitable for all free services (services as in with a server component). Thankfully the functions of tailscale are open source so until enshittification actually happens I will be happy with using a a useful but VC funded project. When I am not willing to make the trade off anymore I will use headscale or some other drop in replacement.
Enshittification is inevitable for all free services (services as in with a server component).
No, it is not that bleak. It is only inevitable when there is an active push for a short-term maximization of user base monetization (which is very much in the nature of VC). It can usually be avoided with products that are wholly under the ownership of all users (such as a cooperative or a government-provided service) or - only if one is lucky - with products of financially independent private enterprises under vaguely benevolent and unhurried leadership (such as Steam, to some extent)
-
If you only need to worry about the IP changing, then your ISP is not using NAT, or CGNAT as it is better known. I'm pretty sure that you can also use port forwarding, which is not commonly available under CGNAT.
Ah, I see where I got confused. Yeah, CGNAT isn't very common around here. I don't think I've ever run into an ISP that uses it. I can see how that complicates things.
