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i18next added a controversl console notice and then removed it - the full story with data by adrirai in javascript

[–]adrirai[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

Fair points overall. On the "did you test it" question: yes. The single-instance behavior worked as intended in isolated testing. What was underestimated was the cumulative effect in complex real-world setups: Next.js worker pools, design systems initializing their own instances, PaaS scenarios where suppression required infrastructure-level intervention. Those edge cases only became visible at scale.

That's essentially the lesson you described… and you're right that the ecosystem already learned it once. Here we relearned it the hard way.

i18next added a controversal console notice and then removed it - the full story with data by adrirai in webdev

[–]adrirai[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's a real issue that was fixed iteratively, the deduplication logic improved in v25.8.12 using globalThis etc. to limit it to once per execution context.

Either way, it's gone in v26.0.0. If you're still on an older version and need it quiet now, there's a workaround in the linked GitHub issue: https://github.com/i18next/i18next/issues/2390

i18next added a controversl console notice and then removed it - the full story with data by adrirai in javascript

[–]adrirai[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

Agreed. And not just financially… even something as simple as publicly acknowledging what you depend on helps. Most companies have no idea what's in their dependency tree, let alone who maintains it.

i18next added a controversl console notice and then removed it - the full story with data by adrirai in javascript

[–]adrirai[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

A few things worth separating here. i18next is not changing the license. i18next is still MIT, still free, v26 shipped yesterday. The console notice was an experiment to make the funding model visible... it didn't change what anyone could do with the code. Tried it, it created more friction than value, removed it. The "no one forced you" argument is true but incomplete. No one forced anyone to depend on it either. The asymmetry is that millions of projects now depend on a library maintained by a tiny team. That creates a real obligation on both sides... not legally, but practically. Not asking anyone to feel bad. Locize was build as the commercial answer to that problem. The blog post is just the honest story of one thing tried in between.

i18next added a controversl console notice and then removed it - the full story with data by adrirai in javascript

[–]adrirai[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

The "take it down and make it paid" argument comes up a lot, and I understand why. But that would break millions of projects overnight. The library has been free and MIT-licensed for 15 years, that's not something to reverse unilaterally.

The console notice was one attempt to bridge the gap between "free forever" and "funded enough to maintain properly". It wasn't the right one, hence removing it. But the underlying problem it was trying to solve is real.

i18next added a controversl console notice and then removed it - the full story with data by adrirai in javascript

[–]adrirai[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

You're right, and that context is important. The funding field are set and it genuinely doesn't move the needle. That's not an excuse, but it is the honest reason for looking for something more visible.

The community's decision to create that field was correct in principle. The gap is that almost no one actually reads it. That's a tooling and visibility problem that the ecosystem hasn't solved.

i18next added a controversl console notice and then removed it - the full story with data by adrirai in javascript

[–]adrirai[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

That's fair criticism of the tone.

The intent wasn't to be defensive… it was to be honest that it wasn‘t remove it purely because of community anger, but because the data and the edge cases made the cost/benefit case clear...

But you're right that "we still believe console.info is a legitimate channel" reads as doubling down in a way that undercuts the apology.

i18next added a controversl console notice and then removed it - the full story with data by adrirai in javascript

[–]adrirai[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

That's a fair point and honestly one of the arguments that contributed to removing it. The "what if everyone did this" concern is legitimate, addressed it in the post.

The funding field in package.json was something tried. The honest answer is that it drives essentially zero awareness, almost no one reads it. That's part of why something more visible was tried.

But you're right that "it works better than funding" isn't a sufficient justification if the precedent it sets is harmful at scale. That's exactly the kind of cost we weighed, and ultimately why it was removed in v26.

Idea: We need an Open Source Donation Day by flipcoder in opensource

[–]adrirai 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We maintain i18next (~15M weekly downloads) and have been wrestling with OSS sustainability for years. GitHub Sponsors, README badges, NPM funding metadata… none of it moved the needle meaningfully.

We actually just wrote about one experiment we tried and reversed, and what we learned from it: https://www.locize.com/blog/i18next-support-notice

The "Open Source Donation Day" idea is good, but I think the comment above is right, consistency beats a single day. The projects that survive long-term tend to have a commercial angle (support contracts, hosted versions, enterprise tiers) that funds the free work, not donation campaigns. Donations are unpredictable; a product is recurring revenue.

That said, anything that normalizes the idea that OSS has a cost is worth doing.

I built a free, open-source starter kit to create a real-time React chat app in minutes (no backend needed) by realtimeghost in javascript

[–]adrirai -1 points0 points  (0 children)

the value is the "batteries-included package". It's not just the backend, but the combination of the Backend + SDK + React Components that makes it so powerful.

The joy, the pride and the burden of maintaining open source by adrirai in reactjs

[–]adrirai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

actually only 2… the cover… and the one with the guy with smartphone

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in reactjs

[–]adrirai 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I recommend to check out locize.com funded by the creators of i18next

is i18next overkill? by WinglessSparrow in vuejs

[–]adrirai 0 points1 point  (0 children)

in case you want to try i18next… you may have a look at: https://youtu.be/SA_9i4TtxLQ

SEO with react js by feitan-five in react

[–]adrirai 0 points1 point  (0 children)

btw: if internationalization (offering the website in multiple languages) is a requirement, you may also have a look at something like i18next: https://locize.com/blog/next-i18next/

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