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Just came here to say that the guy looks like a creep!
become profitable when needed
By what, laying off all QA and support staff and half your developers the moment a single quarterly earnings report isn't spotlessly gilded?
Nerds stop recommending corporate crap: challenge: impossible
a long runway that allows us to become profitable when needed
Switch to self-hosting headscale when they enshittify in an attempt to become profitable, duh
Been meaning to do this. Tailscale was just there and easy to implement when I set my stuff up. Is it relatively simple to transition?
I mainly use Tailscale (and Zerotier) to access my CGNATED LAN, headscale will require me to pay a subscription for a VPS wouldn't it?
I really envy the guys who say only use them because they're lazy to open ports or want a more secure approach, I use them because I NEED them lol.
If (when?) Tailscale enshitify I'll stick with ZT a bit until it goes the same way lol, I started using it 1st, I don't know if ZT came before Tailscale though.
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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.
everything is open source except half of all things.
Lol
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.
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I'm unsure if it has been mentioned, but a similar tool which is open source (you can run the backend unlike tailscale), netbird
Is there an issue with Netbird's servers at the moment? In my testing devices are connected and reach eachother, but the web admin is missing a lot of functionality compared to what's in the docs. The peer devices section is there, but everything else, user settings, rules etc, isn't showing/says I don't have admin permission (of my own account.. Lol?)
Honestly, no idea, worth checking their GitHub etc or their status pages if they have any
Headscale is the tailscale backend server
Well not "the" backend server but "a" different backend server. As far as I know Headscale is a separate implementation from what Tailscale run themselves.
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Tailscale never sat right with me. The convenience was nice, but - like other VC-funded projects - it followed that ever-familiar pattern of an "easy" service popping up out of nowhere and gaining massive popularity seemingly overnight. 🚩🚩🚩
I can't say I'm surprised by any of this.
Would you rather a difficult and hard to use program?
Easy to use means people will want to adopt it, and that's what VC companies want. Nobody wants to pay millions of dollars to make a program that nobody wants to use.
My problem isn't directly with the programs - my problem lies with VC funding in general. Because they will come back for their money, and the project will inevitably enshittify and shove out enthusiasts in the never-ending search for infinite money.
The solution is getting rid of VC bullshit entirely. But we all know that will never happen.
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would you rather ...
If it means no VC, yes, without a doubt. That's kind of the point.
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I think I'll just keep using tailscale until they start enshittifying, and then set up a Headscale instance on a VPS - no need to take this step ahead of time, right?
I mean, all the people saying they can avoid any issues by doing the above - what's to stop Tailscale dropping support for Headscale in future if they're serious about enshitification? Their Linux & Android clients are open source, but not IOS or Windows so they could easily block access for them.
My point being - I'll worry when there is something substantial to worry about, til then they can know I'm using like 3 devices and a github account to authenticate. MagicDNS and the reliability of the clients is just too good for me to switch over mild funding concerns.
Yeah, as I said, it's a friendly reminder. I'm personally probably doing it this year. It's entirely possible that enshittification could come even years from now. It all depends on how their enterprise adoption goes I think. The more money they make there, the longer the individual users are gonna be left unsqueezed.
I never really understood the point of using Tailscale over plain ol' WireGuard. I mean I guess if youve got a dozen+ nodes but I feel like most laymens topologies won't be complex beyond a regular old wireguard config
Same thing here, either tailscale selfhosted or Netbird selfhosted I'd the way to go for all the nice features, having the free tier or tailscale for personal data never sounded right to me.
Wireguard doesn't do NAT/Firewall traversal nor does it have SSO
Tailscale manages the underlying Wireguard for you. I would be great if Wireguard had native NAT traversal but that isn't the case.
NAT punching and proxying when a p2p connection between any 2 nodes cannot be achieved. It’s a world of difference with mobile devices when they always see each other, all the time. However, headscale does all that.
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.
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Are there better alternatives? I was planning on using tailscale until now. :P
For me personally, the next step is using Headscale - a FOSS replacement of the Tailscale control server. The Tailscale clients are already open source and can be used with Headscale.
Someone else could give other suggestions.
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Wireguard if you're just using it yourself. Many various ways to manage it, and it's built in to most routers already.
Otherwise Headscale with one of the webUIs would be the closest replacement.
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Friendly reminder that Tailscale is VC-funded and driving towards IPO
You know what's to come.
The answer to the question is immediately. Or switch to OpenZiti or Pangolin even.
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I'm not that worried as there are alternatives like Netbird. The underlying tech really isn't hard to replicate since Wireguard is pretty standard.
I think it would be cool if Tailscale made it into the enterprise arena.
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Yeah and steam is closed source DRM platform. Great software sometimes is worth the trade off.
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.
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What's the benefit over just WG?
You dont need to manually handle the WG config files. This isn't really an issue when it's just you and your two devices, but once you start supporting more people, like non-technical family members, this gets really annoying really quickly.
Tailscale (and headscale) just require you to log in, which even those family members can manage and then does the rest for you. They also support SSO in which case you wouldn't even have to create new accounts.
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Am I totally off-base in thinking that MagicDNS and pluggable DNS nameserver overrides are a huge feature of tailscale?
I love that I can refer to my tailnet devices just via their machine name. I use it everywhere. And also that I can just slot in my NextDNS ID so that any device running tailscale now automatically uses that, and I don’t have to mess with my shared router settings or per device settings. Is all that actually really easy to set up outside of tailscale? Cuz if it is and I just somehow missed that when doing all my research, I’ll happily give plain wireguard or other mesh orchestrators like NetBird a go.
And I already know that mDNS is not the answer. That protocol is simply not reliable enough.
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this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2025
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