Dear Bitrise

Dear Bitrise Team,

Today, I find it necessary to speak about the recent attack directed at our beloved Tuist project. Our journey with Tuist has been one of unwavering dedication. Over the past five years, we have poured our hearts into it, working tirelessly during our free hours. Our commitment led us to develop tools like XcodeProj, integral to many in the ecosystem and crucial for systems like Bazel, which you are now steering users toward. We’ve not only facilitated the integration of Tuist with your CI services but also recommended speakers for your events.

In our community, we’ve always extended a helping hand to those facing challenges, focusing on support over financial gain. Our approach seems to differ starkly from yours.

Embarking on the Tuist journey, we underestimated the incoming demands for support and the sheer volume of requests. This is a common scenario for open-source maintainers, often leading to burnout, a situation we have strived to avoid. Your approach, seeking a PR merge without having contributed a single line of code to Tuist, appeared more self-serving than community-focused. It added to our workload, contrary to your public image as an advocate for open-source.

The reality of Tuist’s demands became clear – it needed dedicated, full-time attention. Here, we faced a financial dilemma. Donations, which are always welcome and channeled towards bounties, weren’t enough. Investment wasn’t a viable route either, as it often brings profit-driven motives that could jeopardize the essence of our project. Our independence from such influences allows us to focus solely on our user community’s needs and challenges.

Introducing Tuist Cloud was our strategic response to this need for sustainability. We’ve designed Tuist to minimize vendor lock-in, a detail you may have overlooked given your limited engagement with the project. Users can easily migrate away by committing their Xcode projects and dropping Tuist, a feature common to most tools, Bazel and Bitrise included. However, we choose not to retaliate by suggesting alternatives like GitHub Actions.

Tuist Cloud began as an open-source endeavor until we realized that this path wouldn’t lead to sustainability. Comparisons with well-funded projects like Bazel are misplaced; unlike these giants and not so giant, we lack substantial financial backing. Your actions, increasing our burden and publicly undermining us, were a blow to our efforts.

We’re now developing Tuist Cloud as a closed-source extension for Tuist, a decision forced by circumstances, not choice. Our aim is not to perpetuate closed-source development but to find a sustainable path forward. The distinction between Tuist and Tuist Cloud lies in the realm of project generation versus optimized project generation. We urge our users not to be swayed by fear-mongering about Tuist’s future.

Our commitment remains steadfast to a project and community we deeply care about, facing the challenges ahead, and gearing up for major releases. For those in doubt, we encourage conversations with our users to see the value and dedication we bring to the table.

Warm regards, Pedro

P.S. Bitrise, we’ve noticed that you’ve set up redirects on your pages, funneling readers to a blog post casting Tuist in a negative light. This includes the now-missing comparison page, which previously claimed your service’s superiority over ours. Removing this page appears to be an attempt to hide the full story.