Tailwind UI?

[nelsonic]

We started using Tailwind CSS last year dwyl/technology-stack#94 and wrote this guide to help others get started. 🚀
At the time we (I) dismissed Tailwind UI because of the license: 💭

But do we need to revisit that decision in light of the time it's taking us to build our Calendar SPIKE?
ref: dwyl/calendar#25 (comment)

Let's be crystal clear: we are still big proponents of Open Source.
We have painstakingly avoided closed source elements in our Tech Stack
precisely because we don't want the people using our App to be encumbered by restrictive licenses ...

Can we use Tailwind UI in our Projects / Product? 🤷‍♂️

The Tailwind UI license: https://tailwindui.com/license clearly states:

You can:

• Use the Components and Templates to create unlimited End Products.
• Modify the Components and Templates to create derivative components and templates. Those components and templates are subject to this license.
• Use the Components and Templates to create unlimited End Products for unlimited Clients.
• Use the Components and Templates to create End Products where the End Product is sold to End Users.
• Use the Components and Templates to create End Products that are open source and freely available to End Users.

@ukutaht creator of plausible/analytics which we are using dwyl/technology-stack#127 📈
Confirmed in the following HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24696145 that they are using Tailwind UI:

Plausible has an Admin interface, but that is not their product.

Can we use Tailwind UI in Flutter...?

The short answer is No. 🚫

@noirsteed began a port to Dart for use in Flutter: noirsteed/tailwind and noirsteed/tailwind-ui
but both projects appear to be "on hold" noirsteed/tailwind-ui#1 ... ⏳
They shared their initial progress on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/FlutterDev/comments/sdigaz/tailwind_and_tailwind_ui_for_flutter/
and were met with negative feedback. 😢 it's a shame.

But maybe we don't need it if we have Material UI: https://docs.flutter.dev/development/ui/widgets/material

Paying to Support Open Source?

To be clear: if we pay for Tailwind UI it doesn't somehow make it Open Source.
It's still proprietary. We would just be buying a license to use it in our projects/product.

However the creators of Tailwind UI are Tailwind Labs the creators of Tailwind CSS (Open Source).
Tailwind UI is Adam's way of getting paid to do Tailwind Full-time.
I support that.

DaisyUI ?

We've looked at Daisy UI https://daisyui.com/components in the past dwyl/technology-stack#94 and #33 ...
Sadly, as noted in dwyl/calendar#27 does not have the components we want/need.

Can we just use ChatGPT (GitHub Copilot or AWS CodeWhisperer) to Create UI Components for us? 🤖

We can certainly try the AI approach for fun ... 💭
But I get the feeling that's just a time-sink for the time being. ⏳
If what we want is to ship then we should just pay for something that is polished.

[nelsonic]

Pricing is pretty straightforward: https://tailwindui.com/all-access

[nelsonic]

Crickets ... 🦗

Done. 💸

Note: I went with the "personal" license (€249) during the development of the App
because I am a self-funded (bootstrapped) ... no VC/Trust-fund money here ... 🙃
if we ever make a penny off the @dwyl App (i.e. we have paying customers) 🤞
and therefore we can justify paying for additional Devs on our team, 🎉
then I will very gladly upgrade to the "Teams" license and pay another €500 (€749 - €249 = ) to Adam & Co. ❤️
But if I'm not making any money from this, and it's just a giant cash sink hole ... 💰 🔥
I feel this is already a good contribution for a zero-marginal cost digital product.

Let's stop wasting time on "Free" UI components that aren't maintained.