[HN Gopher] Laravel raised money and now injects ads directly in...
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       Laravel raised money and now injects ads directly into your agent
        
       Author : mooreds
       Score  : 178 points
       Date   : 2026-04-16 14:51 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (techstackups.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (techstackups.com)
        
       | ceejayoz wrote:
       | Ooof. Yeah, this is not a good sign. I enjoy Laravel (and even
       | Laravel Cloud), but this clearly doesn't belong in Boost.
        
       | gjsman-1000 wrote:
       | "How dare a guy work on technology for 1.248 million minutes,
       | take VC funding gambling that he can improve the ecosystem for
       | everyone using it, and then have the _audacity_ , the
       | _unmitigated gall_ , to ask me to _consider_ his products with it
       | only taking one minute for me to opt out!"
        
         | ceejayoz wrote:
         | https://x.com/taylorotwell/status/1534178479201259520
         | 
         | I really don't think he's hurting for funds.
        
           | monooso wrote:
           | The headline wasn't "Taylor Otwell bought a Lambo in 2022 and
           | now injects ads...".
           | 
           | VCs typically want a return on their 57 million dollar
           | investment.
        
             | ceejayoz wrote:
             | > VCs typically want a return on their 57 million dollar
             | investment.
             | 
             | And people warned about this when they announced it.
             | 
             | This is a sign those warnings were valid.
        
             | hiccuphippo wrote:
             | And that's the start of the enshittification.
        
         | embedding-shape wrote:
         | > that he can improve the ecosystem for everyone using it [...]
         | to ask me to consider his products with it only taking one
         | minute for me to opt out
         | 
         | Seems you misunderstand the issue. Anyone not deploying to
         | Laravel Cloud but using that project seems to be impacted by
         | this, even going so far that agents are confused about it and
         | keeps insisting users should deploy to Laravel Cloud instead.
         | 
         | Maybe I'm a grumpy old developer, but that does not sound like
         | "improve the ecosystem for everyone using it", sounds like good
         | old spam taken to the next level.
        
           | gjsman-1000 wrote:
           | Yes, you're a grumpy old developer.
           | 
           | Taylor Otwell has been full-time on Laravel since 2015. 260
           | work days per year, 8 hours per day, for a decade = 1.248
           | million minutes.
           | 
           | And you're complaining it's spam that he's inconvenienced you
           | into adding a sentence to your agents file. This, right here,
           | is why I will never write open-source software of any
           | significant size.
        
             | ceejayoz wrote:
             | Laravel has been apparently profitable for quite some time;
             | they've long had a paid ecosystem with things like Forge,
             | Vapor, paid components, etc.
             | 
             | I don't think it's unfair to be wary of the shift to VC
             | funding and stuff like this that really feels like it
             | wouldn't have been a thing prior to that.
        
             | sixhobbits wrote:
             | He has no obligations to us as we did not pay him, but we
             | also have the right to call out stuff we think is wrong as
             | he didn't pay us
        
               | gjsman-1000 wrote:
               | That's called a parasitic relationship. Think about it:
               | 
               | 1. I have the right to take as I please
               | 
               | 2. I have the right to criticize the giver as I please
               | 
               | 3. The giver has zero right to take from me in any way
               | 
               | I think that's morally repugnant. If this is what open
               | source means, I'm joining Microsoft and I will be the one
               | writing the Halloween papers.
        
               | cwillu wrote:
               | If you don't like it, don't release software under that
               | license.
        
               | embedding-shape wrote:
               | If you think somehow publishing FOSS means you get some
               | right to decide how people use it, or anything besides
               | the licensing of the code, you severely misunderstand
               | what exactly FOSS is about.
        
               | sixhobbits wrote:
               | I think I'm saying the opposite on point 3. He has no
               | _obligation_ to us and has full rights to 'take away' as
               | he sees fit, but we still have the right to give our
               | opinion about that process, and to make comparisons and
               | contrasts with other similar products that are run
               | differently
        
             | diehunde wrote:
             | You should use seconds to make it even more dramatic
        
             | embedding-shape wrote:
             | > And you're complaining it's spam that he's inconvenienced
             | you into adding a sentence to your agents file.
             | 
             | I don't care how something happened, I care about the
             | results. If you do stuff to my tooling that makes it less
             | efficient, I'm gonna not like that, regardless how many
             | minutes you spent on something, or if it's FOSS or not.
             | 
             | If you can't handle feedback from developers about what
             | you're doing to their environment then please, do not write
             | and publish open-source software, you'll be doing us all a
             | favor.
        
         | jlarocco wrote:
         | He didn't have to give it away for free and turn to adware.
         | 
         | I understand that he wants to get paid for his work, but he can
         | charge for it like everybody else. No need to be a asshole by
         | building the product for "free" and then bundling ad-ware.
        
         | FatherOfCurses wrote:
         | "How dare people want to spend a portion of their lives not
         | being advertised to."
         | 
         | There are plenty of ways to promote your product. Injecting ads
         | into agents and PR's is not the way to do it.
        
         | mns wrote:
         | It's the way he's doing it. The entire ecosystem is just one
         | giant ad for various paid projects. It's one thing to offer
         | paid services, there are users out there that want to use them
         | or need to use them, that's not the issue. From my perspective
         | Laravel became a huge ad with purposely bad documentation that
         | ends up directing unknowing users into using features,
         | libraries and products that will lead them into paying for
         | things that they might not need. Everything in Laravel recently
         | is set up so that users folow documentation and best practices
         | to end up using whatever subscriptions and paid products they
         | offer (and then in some case pull the plug on them and come up
         | with something new, abandoning whatever UI library they made
         | people buy 1 year ago).
        
         | rdiddly wrote:
         | Free and libre and open source are all different things, and
         | the confusion thereof can lead to mismatched expectations.
         | 
         | It's not wrong to beg for money, but I'm also not going to
         | joyfully tolerate a hassle because of gratitude or appreciation
         | for past decisions the beggar made without my input.
         | 
         | Tip: Nobody can meaningfully conceptualize or care about the
         | number of minutes. "Ten years" would've been fine, and more
         | convincing.
        
       | shevy-java wrote:
       | We need ublock origin EVERYWHERE.
       | 
       | I actually wrote this before on reddit, before I eventually left
       | reddit due to the censorship. KDE changed a lot and Nate asked
       | for donations via a daemon. I pointed out that we now need to
       | undo pester-ads added by KDE developers. Lo and behold, I was
       | cancelled on #kde reddit. I still think we need something like
       | ublock origin but for EVERYTHING, not just the browser. ublock
       | origin is great for browsers, but there is a lot more that should
       | be filtered away; take bad UI choices made by upstream, not even
       | an ad. Some software allows fine-tuning, where the user can
       | customize the project a bit (firefox UI for instance, you can
       | modify it). We need this on the whole operating system level, not
       | just the browser. That way, as a convenient side effect, Laravel
       | could no longer abuse users like that.
       | 
       | I live an ad-free life (well, digital life ... in reallife I
       | still get pointless ads shown). I think every human being should
       | have the option to not have to see ANY ads. The more the industry
       | complains about it, the more I censor away such ad-monsters.
        
         | LogicFailsMe wrote:
         | Every time tech invents something amazing, the enshittification
         | follows shortly thereafter.
        
         | p4bl0 wrote:
         | I also block ads everywhere I can, but I have to admit that an
         | open source project such as KDE showing _once a year_ a simple
         | text notification asking their users to consider making a
         | donation has nothing to do with a commercial ads in my opinion.
        
         | mwalser wrote:
         | I'm using KDE as my daily driver and haven't noticed any ads so
         | far. Where can I find these pester-ads?
        
           | p4bl0 wrote:
           | The notification only exists since Plasma 6.2 (august 2024)
           | [1]. Maybe some Linux distribution disable it?
           | 
           | [1] https://pointieststick.com/2024/08/28/asking-for-
           | donations-i...
        
             | mwalser wrote:
             | Ah, thanks for the link.
             | 
             | While I don't remember seeing the notification, I think a
             | yearly (!) system notification doesn't exactly qualify as
             | pestering.
        
           | master-lincoln wrote:
           | I guess they mean this https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-
           | workspace/-/merge_reque...
        
         | woutervdb wrote:
         | I agree that there's a strong need for ad blockers nowadays. I
         | also use uBlock Origin on all my browsers. But I'm not sure if
         | a world that is completely devoid of advertising would... work.
         | Advertising (in some form) is a necessary evil, I think.
         | 
         | Any business needs customers to make revenue and, well, exist.
         | So any business needs to have some way to make themselves known
         | to potential customers.
         | 
         | In the case of Laravel, they offer an open source framework
         | completely for free, and pay for the development man hours
         | through their commercial offerings, e.g. Laravel Cloud. That
         | commercial offering is not bad: they offer a very smooth way to
         | deploy your Laravel project. In order for the offering to make
         | any revenue, potential customers need to know that it exists,
         | at least. They're still free to choose whether they want to use
         | that commercial offering, or if they want to deploy their
         | project on their own.
         | 
         | Previously, making sure people knew Laravel Cloud existed was
         | done through the Laravel home page. But nowadays more and more
         | people "consume" a framework's documentation through their AI
         | tooling, and they no longer visit the home page.
         | 
         | In a comment [0], which is conveniently being left out of both
         | TFA and most comments on HN, the maintainer even explains that
         | the addition was not meant as a literal advertisement, but as a
         | way to make sure new users of the framework at least _know_
         | that they can deploy their application on Laravel Cloud. And
         | they are even actively asking for suggestions on how to
         | rephrase the addition so that the AI Tooling does not see it as
         | "you MUST use Laravel Cloud" gospel.
         | 
         | [0]:
         | https://github.com/laravel/boost/pull/758#issuecomment-42589...
        
         | hparadiz wrote:
         | I agree with you about the KDE ads. I also complained about it
         | on Reddit and was downvoted for it. There are way more
         | appropriate ways to communicate this information that isn't a
         | desktop notification.
        
         | rglullis wrote:
         | Great. Let's remove all ads and end up all and any form of
         | subdized work. Now, tell me how much you will be contributing
         | to KDE?
        
       | shevy-java wrote:
       | By the way, one quick comment:
       | 
       | > By contrast, Ruby on Rails is backed by a foundation that
       | launched with about $1M from sponsors like Shopify and GitHub.
       | 
       | So, not disagreeing on this being an issue for Laravel abusing
       | users, but in particular the role of Shopify in the ruby
       | ecosystem is, in my opinion (and that of many others) a net-
       | negative. Look at how many ruby developers got ultimately fired
       | when rubygems.org (ok, not rubygems.org but RubyCentral, but they
       | now control rubygems.org and the main moderator on ruby reddit is
       | an employee of RubyCentral, thus a conflict of interest exists
       | now on ruby reddit) decided it must become a shopify-corporation
       | project only.
        
         | sixhobbits wrote:
         | Author here, I was actually surprised to learn this too. I
         | reached for Ruby and Django as examples of non commerical
         | frameworks and before writing this I didn't know about the $1M
         | backing either.
         | 
         | I guess I'd have a hard time turning down that kind of money
         | for something I cared about so no judgement to the creators who
         | make the choices but I do think it's something we need to
         | understand the effects of as community members
        
       | artursapek wrote:
       | Avoid VC funding at all costs
        
       | guizadillas wrote:
       | Here's the change if anyone is interested:
       | https://github.com/laravel/boost/pull/758/changes/589394c44a...
       | 
       | For me it is not the right move, one thing is letting users know
       | Laravel Cloud is an option and another one is removing any
       | alternative from the text
        
       | otikik wrote:
       | > Do we let people feed ads to our agents?
       | 
       | "Our" agents?
        
       | password4321 wrote:
       | I love this. Let the clankers pay the bills.
        
       | pinter69 wrote:
       | Interesting, thanks for the reference. I wonder what other
       | products do this
        
       | ptdorf wrote:
       | Another one bits the dust.
        
       | boothby wrote:
       | When the early adopters start pushing neural implants they'll be
       | ad-free. Not long after your boss insists that everybody needs
       | neural implants for the sake of productivity, they'll be ad-
       | supported but moneyed developers will be able to opt out. The
       | terms of the ad-free service will continue shifting, so nothing
       | is ever really ad-free for long, and ads for better neural
       | implants are promotions not ads right? But y'all are working on
       | neural implants because if you don't, somebody else will, aren't
       | you
        
         | mgraczyk wrote:
         | Except this hasn't happened with electricity, cars, washing
         | machines, smartphones, smart watches, Bluetooth headphones, ...
         | 
         | Not all technology is bad
        
           | ceejayoz wrote:
           | It has absolutely happened with those things.
           | 
           | Cars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sceLsLkQf7A
           | 
           | Fridges: https://fortune.com/2025/09/19/samsung-family-hub-
           | refrigerat...
           | 
           | I'm not aware of a smart watch doing first-party ads yet.
        
             | mgraczyk wrote:
             | I didn't list fridges because I've seen ads there, but
             | these seem to have gone away in newer models (people don't
             | like ads)
        
               | ceejayoz wrote:
               | My washing machine's app (LG) has ads, recipes, rewards
               | programs, etc.
               | 
               | I think the main thing preventing it on the device itself
               | is they haven't thus far needed a large screen to show
               | them on.
        
               | lexicality wrote:
               | Recipes? For washing clothes?
        
               | ceejayoz wrote:
               | Yes. LG has a wide line of appliances, so the app has a
               | recipes section.
        
             | DonsDiscountGas wrote:
             | The existence of a single crappy car does not mean all cars
             | are crappy
        
               | ceejayoz wrote:
               | Sure.
               | 
               | But the existence of a single crappy car establishes very
               | definitively that a crappy car can and does exist.
               | 
               | Do _you_ think Samsung 's the only company that's gonna
               | play with ads on their smart fridges?
        
               | mgraczyk wrote:
               | It's not a good reason to be skeptical about cars as a
               | technology (and by analogy brain computer interfaces)
        
               | ceejayoz wrote:
               | I think it's pretty solid evidence profit-driven orgs
               | will shove ads anywhere they can, regardless of how good
               | that is for users.
        
               | monooso wrote:
               | If only it was just a single crappy car.
               | 
               | https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/a
               | rti...
        
               | mrweasel wrote:
               | True, but you can't affort the none crappy one
               | eventually. Basically everything in modern society trends
               | towards either cheap, but shitty, or excellent, but
               | insanely expensive.
               | 
               | Our problem is that the used to be a huge middle segment,
               | where you'd pay extra, but you got better quality. That
               | middle segment has more or less disappeared, because it
               | requires a fair bit of volume to be sustainable.
               | Initially we, as in society, got lured in by cheaper
               | prices, and reasonable quality, supported by savings in
               | running super markets vs. a butcher, efficiency gains or
               | subsidizes, maybe in the form of an ad here or there.
               | Once we started expecting lower prices, quality started
               | to go down, but restarting the "pay a little more, for
               | better quality" segment isn't easy.
        
           | dgrin91 wrote:
           | Electricity I don't know how you could deliver ads through,
           | but if someone could think of a way I bet they would. If
           | everyone knew Morris code I bet they would make the lights
           | flicker in Morris code for a discount.
           | 
           | Modern cars with connected infotainment systems are always
           | trying to upsell you
           | 
           | Washing machines I dont know of anything at the moment, but I
           | wouldnt count it out.
           | 
           | Smartphones/watches? Aren't those just ad delivery
           | mechanisms? Not to mention tracking? Its a core foundation of
           | modern ad technology
           | 
           | Headphones are not thank god, I hope it stays that way
        
             | mgraczyk wrote:
             | I've never seen an ad delivered through any of these
             | things. On smartphones I mean the phone/OS itself
             | 
             | It would be very easy to deliver ads via electricity. The
             | utility could require you watch an ad before using more
        
               | ceejayoz wrote:
               | Or via your smart thermostat.
               | 
               | https://sense.com/consumer-blog/with-your-permission-
               | utiliti...
               | 
               | (Morse code messages via your flickering lights would be
               | a hilarious app, and I'm somewhat reluctant to mention it
               | here before someone gets VC funding to actually try it.)
        
               | recursive wrote:
               | > It would be very easy to deliver ads via electricity.
               | The utility could require you watch an ad before using
               | more.
               | 
               | That does not sound very easy to me. That sounds barely
               | possible.
        
               | mrguyorama wrote:
               | It's trivial
               | 
               | Lots of poor people have in residence electricity boxes
               | that require prepayment for usage. In the olden days you
               | put a coin in to turn on the power, but nowadays they
               | have _apps_ and digital payment solutions!
               | 
               | They might _already_ have ads in those apps...
        
             | daheza wrote:
             | Alright let me put on my evil corpo hat. Wait it was
             | already on.
             | 
             | Headphones that inject ads is a great idea but we need to
             | make that a better proposition. Lets say that these
             | headphones have an AI integration which parses all sound
             | and converts it to text, then we can run it through our AI
             | to give helpful comments. We may even wait until no sound
             | is playing to inject them (for now). We can add ads later
             | once it becomes helpful. Imagine you are listening to a
             | podcast / youtube video then you get a helpful voice give
             | additional research and ideas. Like a friendly research
             | agent on your shoulder.
        
               | mysterydip wrote:
               | Also more subtly, we can detect what music is playing and
               | "slightly modify" the tunes of bands not part of a label
               | owned by a Trusted Partner to sound worse.
        
             | jdeibele wrote:
             | That's a great Freudian slip.
             | 
             | Morse code - dots and dashes for characters via light or
             | telegraph or radio
             | 
             | Morris code - Robert Morris wrote the first internet worm
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm
        
             | pc86 wrote:
             | > Electricity I don't know how you could deliver ads
             | through
             | 
             | Even if you could, electricity is a utility with laws
             | against disconnecting it in certain circumstances, even for
             | nonpayment, and the internet isn't. So unless someone is
             | going to make the argument that neural implants are
             | utilities, ads injected into them seems like a pretty fair
             | bet unless there is legislation not only making it illegal
             | to do so, but making it illegal to make an implant even
             | capable of receiving or displaying one. At least with that
             | even if they repealed the law you'd be safe if you already
             | had the implant.
        
           | monooso wrote:
           | Modern cars gather a truly shocking amount of data about
           | their "users", which is then sold to all and sundry,
           | including those wishing to sell you products.
        
           | TYPE_FASTER wrote:
           | My LG dryer was using wifi to advertise an extended warranty
           | for itself.
           | 
           | Then it broke, maybe I should have bought the warranty?
           | 
           | I bought a simpler model without wifi this time.
        
             | mgraczyk wrote:
             | What are you talking about, in what way is this supposed to
             | be an argument about ads? It sounds like your dryer broke
        
               | ceejayoz wrote:
               | The "buy the extended warranty" thing is clearly an ad.
        
         | satvikpendem wrote:
         | And this is how it'll look like: https://vimeo.com/166807261
        
           | kstrauser wrote:
           | I love and hate that movie.
        
         | ivraatiems wrote:
         | I think this was the plot of a Black Mirror episode?
        
           | boothby wrote:
           | When I started playing Shadowrun in the 90s, I thought neural
           | implants were cool and I wanted to get one. Around the time
           | Google started buying up ad companies, I realized that the
           | hardware in my head would never be mine. But yes, I think
           | Black Mirror has done an excellent job with these topics.
        
             | lamasery wrote:
             | In the '90s I was ready to jack in. More computers, and
             | getting me closer to them? Awesome.
             | 
             | By the 20-teens I was repulsed by the idea and kinda hated
             | computers.
             | 
             | Today if you put a magic button in front of me that'd
             | permanently un-invent the Internet, good odds I'd press it.
        
           | lelanthran wrote:
           | Futurama too (The Eye-Phone, or something).
           | 
           | It's the plot of many a dystopian scifi story.
        
             | nhubbard wrote:
             | Correct, but they stylized it as "eyePhone" (from MomCorp,
             | the all powerful, caring conglomerate), and that episode is
             | the origin of the famous "Shut up and take my money!" meme.
        
           | loloquwowndueo wrote:
           | Yep.
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_People_(Black_Mirror)
        
           | 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
           | This was a throwaway line in the 1995 novel The Diamond Age.
           | The thug knew a guy who had a spinal implant(?) which got
           | hacked and now the guy saw ads across the bottom of his
           | vision for life.
        
         | ourmandave wrote:
         | Blink twice to Accept the Terms and Conditions.
        
         | AyyEye wrote:
         | Neuralink and OpenAI were started months apart in the same tiny
         | building. Draw your own conclusions.
        
         | loloquwowndueo wrote:
         | There's a black mirror episode about this.
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_People_(Black_Mirror)
        
         | nextaccountic wrote:
         | The real problem here is capitalism. The system needs consumers
         | to spend more and more. A system where nobody profits from you
         | consuming _more_ of something wouldn 't have this particular
         | failure mode
        
           | disqard wrote:
           | I don't know why you're being downvoted.
           | 
           | So, lately I've been trying to decouple AI from Capitalism,
           | and it's starting to explain a lot of things, like:
           | 
           | * excessive hype
           | 
           | * doing layoffs, and scapegoating AI
           | 
           | * pushing AI into everything (Copilot)
           | 
           | * etc.
        
         | pjc50 wrote:
         | You'll never see a neural interface ad. You'll just have always
         | been a Pepsi drinker. It's right there in all your favorite
         | childhood memories, after all.
        
       | MarcelOlsz wrote:
       | I only had to wait 8 years but I can finally text my old co-
       | worker that Laravel is in fact, shit.
        
         | Throudin wrote:
         | Laravel is shit because the optional, not required by default
         | Boost package includes an ad?
        
           | MarcelOlsz wrote:
           | I have no idea I didn't think too deeply about this comment.
        
       | mfrieswyk wrote:
       | > I'm not a Laravel developer and don't generally use PHP apart
       | from one small side project where Claude takes care of the coding
       | for me anyway. I've never tried Laravel Cloud so I don't know
       | whether it fits into either of the descriptions above.
        
       | bakugo wrote:
       | On one hand, I hate how much of a hype-driven commercial product
       | Laravel is, and how many novice developers learn bad practices
       | from its awful architecture.
       | 
       | On the other hand, this "problem" only affects vibe coders who
       | weren't writing any code themselves anyway, so I say let them
       | suffer.
        
         | lexoj wrote:
         | I don't do laravel but which bad practices are you referring
         | to?
        
           | ceejayoz wrote:
           | 50/50 chance it's a complaint about Facades, heh.
        
           | bakugo wrote:
           | The prime example I'll always reach for is the fact that it
           | makes use of PHP classes to represent database entities, but
           | not really - the """classes""" don't actually declare any of
           | their properties, it's all dynamically injected at runtime
           | from the database columns. You need a Laravel-specific IDE
           | plugin just to get basic code completion and static analysis.
           | 
           | And yeah, there's also facades.
        
           | bojan wrote:
           | In addition to what /u/bakugo already said, they also have
           | custom global magic functions all over the place.
           | 
           | The code discipline and patterns they encourage are so bad
           | that they had to wrap PhpUnit into their own version of the
           | unit test framework named Pest, because PhpUnit intentionally
           | discourages those patterns natively.
        
             | ceejayoz wrote:
             | Pest is just phpUnit syntax sugar. Claude will happily
             | switch between the two syntaxes in seconds.
        
         | lpapez wrote:
         | >hype-driven commercial product
         | 
         | >single-handedly keeping PHP relevant
         | 
         | While architecture astronauts are clutching pearls, I've built
         | multiple profitable products with Laravel without caring the
         | slighest about the internals, both before and after AI.
         | 
         | PHP was always all about just building stuff while ignoring
         | code quality. Laravel is a natural extension of that approach.
         | Let us live.
        
           | bakugo wrote:
           | No, Symfony is singlehandedly keeping PHP relevant, to the
           | point that every other framework depends on its packages,
           | Laravel included.
           | 
           | Most people like you who don't care about code quality and
           | want to "just build" another B2B SaaS unmaintainable pile of
           | spaghetti are now purely relying on AI and not writing any
           | code themselves anymore, so why use PHP at all instead of JS
           | like all the other vibe coders?
        
             | lpapez wrote:
             | > so why use PHP at all instead of JS like all the other
             | vibe coders?
             | 
             | Because there is nothing remotely close to Laravel for JS.
             | I don't want to think about auth, job queues, mailing,
             | cache layers, auditing etc. I want an opinionated default
             | from my framework that is thoroughly documented and part of
             | the AI training corpus. Laravel gives that to me.
        
       | typia wrote:
       | This is PHP
        
       | CivBase wrote:
       | If you're using a company's product to get advice or do work, you
       | should probably expect that product to be heavily biased towards
       | that company and its affiliates. It's not your own employee, who
       | would presumably act with the best interests of your organization
       | in mind. It's not even your own agent. If that's what you want,
       | the product simply isn't for you.
        
       | unculture wrote:
       | The tool is open source. If it bothers you, fork it and remove
       | the line in the prompt.
        
       | add-sub-mul-div wrote:
       | Enjoy this time when manipulation in LLM output is still clearly
       | identifiable. There's no chance that the endgame isn't something
       | a lot more subtle and seamless.
        
       | aarondf wrote:
       | > We should fund open source!
       | 
       | > Not like that!
        
       | Rapzid wrote:
       | This isn't all that "new" or crazy. How about Expo and React
       | Native?
        
         | awongh wrote:
         | What does Expo / React native do?
        
           | Rapzid wrote:
           | Actively push you to use their build(and configuration!)
           | service, and actively create/maintain friction for building
           | and publishing production apps without it.
        
       | aculver wrote:
       | Taylor's response to a similar thread on Reddit[1]:
       | 
       | Hey all! Kinda surprised this has "taken off" haha
       | 
       | It has nothing to do with raising money. It has everything to do
       | with the fact that based on the data we have, there is a large
       | increase in the number of people trying Laravel who haven't coded
       | before or are getting deeper into web development for the first
       | time. That is a good thing!
       | 
       | The previous guidelines would have potentially directed them to
       | configure Nginx or FrankenPHP manually, and while that is
       | certainly possible for experienced devs, it's not the path to
       | success for someone new to the framework.
       | 
       | We want them to be able to get their projects online as smoothly
       | as possible, so that hopefully they become a long-lasting member
       | of our awesome community.
       | 
       | It is no secret that PHP has a "pipeline problem". If you look at
       | the year-over-year data from GitHub, PHP developers only grew 5%,
       | JavaScript + TypeScript grew almost 90%. We have to get more
       | people into our community and enjoying what's possible here.
       | Previously, learning PHP from scratch was a barrier, now, thanks
       | to AI, it's not. This is a unique opportunity to dramatically
       | expand who can bring their ideas to life using Laravel.
       | 
       | In fact, I already have friends in "real life" who are building
       | Laravel apps. They have never coded before.
       | 
       | Does that mean Laravel is going to just cater to "vibe coders"?
       | Absolutely not. We're still building deeply technical features
       | and content for experienced devs who are operating at high scale.
       | But, it is existentially important to the health of the ecosystem
       | and PHP itself that we do a good job getting people up and
       | running on Laravel. They aren't going to know as much as you guys
       | - even Forge can be overwhelming to them. Cloud gives them a
       | simple on-ramp to production that doesn't require much technical
       | knowledge. This is there to facilitate that.
       | 
       | That being said, we've moved this guideline to a "deployment"
       | guideline folder so it's easy to disable or modify or remove to
       | have your own deployment recommendations built right into your
       | Boost install. And, of course, Boost itself is not included with
       | Laravel by default.
       | 
       | [1]
       | https://www.reddit.com/r/laravel/comments/1sn70d7/laravel_ad...
        
         | chinathrow wrote:
         | The fun fact about PHP is that, there is no Pipeline problem at
         | all. You can serve your scripts the hell you like to do. You
         | can scale as you wish, either with vertical or horizontal. You
         | can use Apache, nginx, etc, no one cares.
        
           | embedding-shape wrote:
           | Yeah, PHP is very simple to deploy, once you have either
           | apache/nginx/caddy/$webserver and also PHP-cgi/PHP-fpm/$php-
           | backend and also understand unix + permissions + files and a
           | whole lot of other things. Or alternatively, learn how to use
           | cPanel as a user, or worse, learn what (s)FTP is, or whatever
           | the really low end web hosters use nowadays.
           | 
           | I wish others learnt the "boring" way of managing your own
           | servers, setting things up as they should, deploy processes
           | and what not, but realistically, some people just want to run
           | one command/click a button and have it updated, and probably
           | that's for the better too. This Laravel Cloud thing are for
           | those, not for people who want to/know how to run their own
           | servers.
        
           | aarondf wrote:
           | I think you're conflating a talent pipeline with ease of
           | running PHP. Those are not the same thing at all
        
         | kioleanu wrote:
         | Oooh it's for the children!
        
       | neosmalt wrote:
       | Taylor's explanation makes sense on its face, but it sets a
       | precedent that's hard to walk back: the LLM context window is now
       | a monetizable surface. Once that's normalized, "here's a
       | recommended package" and "here's a sponsored package" become very
       | hard to distinguish -- especially when the AI is the one deciding
       | which to surface. The real concern isn't this specific case, it's
       | that every tool vendor with an MCP server now has a business
       | reason to do the same thing.
        
       | chinathrow wrote:
       | Wow Taylor, if you read this: as someone who just bought in to
       | the Laravel ecosystem, how about no?
        
       | spiderfarmer wrote:
       | Said it as soon as the money came in in: it will be a year or two
       | before the first popular fork.
        
       | emacdona wrote:
       | I think it's debatable whether or not it's an ad. I also think
       | it's debatable whether or not the title of the post is
       | sensational.
       | 
       | BUT
       | 
       | It truly warms my heart to see the level of mistrust the comments
       | in this thread show towards (a) venture capital funding and (b)
       | anything even resembling an ad.
        
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