The library is free.
The service has a generous tier.
The tool is the obvious choice
and everybody uses it.
None of that is a promise.
Behind every tool
is a company with a runway,
or a person with a life,
and both of those change
without asking you.
The licence gets rewritten.
The free tier grows a floor.
The company is acquired
and the roadmap becomes
somebody else's strategy.
The maintainer takes a job
that pays,
and the issues stop closing.
That is not betrayal.
That is ownership.
You were renting.
The mistake is not
depending on things.
You have to depend on things.
The mistake is depending on them
in a way that cannot be undone.
There is a difference
between using a tool
and being shaped by one.
If its concepts are in your domain model,
if its identifiers are your identifiers,
if its way of thinking about the problem
has quietly become
your way of thinking about the problem,
then leaving is not a migration.
It is a rewrite.
So ask a cheap question
at the moment you adopt something.
What would it take to leave?
Not to plan the leaving.
Just to know the number.
A week is fine.
A quarter is a decision.
Unknown is a warning.
Keep the dependency at the edge,
where you can see it.
Own your data
in a shape you can export
and actually read.
Prefer boring formats
at the boundaries.
And look at who is
on the other side.
Who pays for this.
How many people commit to it.
Whether the business model
is one you would want to be
on the wrong side of
when growth gets hard.
That is not cynicism.
That is knowing the weather
in the country
you have moved to.
Because the tool will change,
or its price will,
or its owner will,
and none of it
will arrive as a question
you get to answer.
It will arrive as an email
you have to.
– Serguey Asael Shinder
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