> You invent something, and then immediately turn it into a cheap commodity by releasing it for free.
Exactly. A 71-line python script https://github.com/getsentry/sentry/commit/3c2e87573d3bd16f6... was groundbreaking when it came out and the fact that it springboarded into a startup is commendable.
But 15 years later and Functional Software Inc. d/b/a Sentry has to support 100+ (according to their marketing material) platforms as well as adding new verticals in UX session replay, web performance, backend profiling, CORS error monitoring, code coverage etc. just to keep the growth machine going. That's not OSS' fault.
In The life and death of open source companiesgetsentry
sentry
Python2012–2026
getsentry / sentry
sentry
Developer-first error tracking and performance monitoring
60Distinct people
88Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
45.8KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Developer-first error tracking and performance monitoring
GitHub
Where it is used
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
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Also in these discussions
- getsentry/self-hosted · linked in 3 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 5:05:26 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year88 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2012-10-01 16:28:41 UTC to 2026-02-07 15:56:46 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2013 | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 0 | 7 |
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 1 | 3 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 0 | 7 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 13 | 0 | 13 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 1 | 5 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 8 | 0 | 8 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 1 | 6 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 0 | 6 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 8 | 0 | 8 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 1 | 5 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
Users and logs provide clues. Sentry provides answers.
What's Sentry?
Sentry is the debugging platform that helps every developer detect, trace, and fix issues. Code breaks, fix it faster.
Official Sentry SDKs
Resources
Documentation
Discussions (Bugs, feature requests,
general questions)
Discord
Contributing
Bug Tracker
Code
Transifex (Translate
Sentry!)
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
8 sourceshttps://github.com/getsentry/sentry/pull/60144 -> https://github.com/getsentry/sentry/blob/d4d89e2fa93ad99f13d...
If they're going to all this trouble for "ambiguity," I don't know why they wouldn't further extend their custom SPDX identifier to include the "2 year" rollover, since that's one of their pearl-clutching reasons for this bullshit: https://github.com/getsentry/loose-confederation/issues/4
In Sentry Relicense Again (FSL)It's source available under the BSL: https://github.com/getsentry/sentry. After four years it becomes open source (probably to prevent "AWS Elastic Error Handling service(tm)" from becoming a thing)
You can still run it for your company for free, if you feel like managing all of the infra it requires.
In Sentry: From the BeginningSentry, another BUSL licensed project, seems fine? https://github.com/getsentry/sentry/graphs/contributors
In HashiCorp adopts Business Source LicenseYou can take a look at the Python codebase for Sentry over here: https://github.com/getsentry/sentry
In A cryptocurrency company had a $65M bill, per Datadog’s Q1 earnings callThat is no longer true, it is source available, becoming open source after a 3 year embargo period: https://github.com/getsentry/sentry/blob/23.3.1/LICENSE#L19
In Supabase Logs: open-source logging serverWe launched this last week! Right now it's only available on SaaS (sentry.io), but we've been developing it in public in our main server repository (github.com/getsentry/sentry) and plan to have proper instructions for self-hosted users soon.
In Show HN: We’re open-sourcing our session replay tool