@kabir @tailscale I'm curious how Tailscale (company) is thinking about homelab users these days.

I'd like to run services for a circle of friends and family, maybe 20 people. Historically that would have meant sharing a host with each of those people on their own Tailnets. It feels like that is not going to change, that services will be locked to a single Tailnet. At that point the whole setup becomes a challenge for homelabs. Do people switch Tailnets to access my services? That's a lot of friction. Do I pay for those users to be guests on my Tailnet? That's very un-homelab.

My biggest issue with Tailnet to Tailnet host sharing is the friction. If I replace a node I have to re-share with everyone. It would be significantly better to share the Service and abstract the host servicing that service away.

Any insight on the direction you think Tailscale plays in the homelab space base on these ideas?

@kabir @tailscale Thanks for inquiry.

I appreciate that its a tough question to answer, servicing home labs without affecting your enterprise offerings is probably a real challenge (would unlimited home use undercut your ability to sell the features? probably).

Its clear (to me) how much potential Services has. I'm sure you have lots of fun ideas of how to add additional features. I was excited about the possibilities before seeing the ten service limit.

I'm not sure if the point of locking services for personal plans is to make money or just limit peoples ability to leech off of your good works. If its the former, I'm not sure what you would consider fair, it has become a large project.

I'll just say that for me personally, I'd be more than happy to be paying Tailscale $20/month for access to consume everything I need so that I can service my circle. I'll sign an agreement that I'm not using it for any business. If you asked me the value of an individual service limit? Its tough to say I'm going to pay a dollar a month to access a self-hosted service that is running a totally open source free software stack, you know? Alacarte is great for businesses, but individuals are going to struggle with it, I think. Would each of the people in my circle be willing to pay $5/month? I think so, but the billing model right now doesn't lend itself to using the service by different users.

If you limit services for personal users either you set the number low enough that someone like me feels the pinch and is incentivized to use a tool without limits, or you set the number high enough that it's really only there as a token effort to prevent egregious abuse. Its a difficult line to walk.

I've also noticed that at the moment at least there's no way to share services with another Tailnet, that might be a blocker to using it anyway. What you have might cover a household, but it's not going to cover a circle of friends and family. Sharing with other tailnets seemed to be the primary model for self-hosted sharing with other households.

@tailscale I wanted to chime with my disappointment that access to Services is going to be limited.

I really appreciate the work that everyone there does and that I get to use the benefits of that for basically nothing (you actively removed the one good option I had to give you some form of payment).

Limiting access to Services means that I have to make compromises in my homelab. Basically, that means I'm not going to use it because it cannot be applied uniformly.

I'm giving you data so that you have it for future decision making. From where I'm sitting this feels like the early steps of focusing on enterprise and leaving the homelab behind. You have good reasons to do so, and I don't blame you if you do, but it gives me pause about what my next steps should be.