Cloudflare Acquires VoidZero

Cloudflare has acquired Void Zero and we're going to be diving into all of that live here at JS Nation in

Amsterdam. I mean, this is sick. Look at

Amsterdam. I mean, this is sick. Look at

this wicked conference.

Thousands of Europeans here. It's just

excellent. I'm stoked to be here. But

this is this is fun. Look at this set.

We got multiple cams. Cam 1, Cam 2, Cam 1, Cam 2. Sorry for that one. So CJ cam, there's three cams and we're in the same room. That's amazing. Yes, we're all

room. That's amazing. Yes, we're all getting to actually chat here.

Yeah, that's true.

So the big news obviously that we're going to be talking about as we said up top was that Cloudflare has acquired Void Zero, the creators of Void, VIT

plus, VIT, these things that we know and love and that's big news. Even though they haven't acquired VIT itself, Vit is going to remain uh open source. It has

its own team of collaborators.

Yeah. Well, in fact, they've they've like put up a bunch of money towards the the open source part, a million bucks towards it, which is awesome. So,

don't run to the comments just yet. Um,

I feel good about Cloudflare, the company. What do you think like about

company. What do you think like about them acquiring? I feel good about the

them acquiring? I feel good about the future of VIT.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I out of all the companies that could have acquired VIT.

Yeah.

Or not they didn't acquire Vit, I shouldn't say that. Void Void Zero. I I

mean, Cloudflare seems like the best bet to me. I I have nothing but good vibes

to me. I I have nothing but good vibes with Cloudflare personally cuz I host so much stuff there and I tend to like all their stuff. So,

their stuff. So, that's just me though, you know.

Yes. So, let's let's talk about why like why why did they do this and and why is it exciting? So, VIT, we're going to

it exciting? So, VIT, we're going to call it Vit. Everyone gets mad that they acquire VE. We get it. It's a company

acquire VE. We get it. It's a company called Void Zero run by Evanu. Um and

but they didn't acquire V. Not the

maintainers of V even just the creator.

Yes.

Of I think I think everybody understands that. But so we we talked about V+ a

that. But so we we talked about V+ a couple months ago, right? V+ is this new CLI tool that allows you that encompasses everything, right? You got

your your linting, your formatting, your your building, um all all of that in one single CLI tool, which is fantastic.

I've been using it myself for all of my projects going forward.

I was going to say CJ, are you using V+?

I haven't yet. I tried it.

Yes.

But next project I probably will just because it's it's it scaffolds everything, right? Like like you don't

everything, right? Like like you don't have to have a separate config file for everything. It's a single config. So it

everything. It's a single config. So it

seems nice. I haven't tried it yet, but it seems nice.

Yes. I'm also using V+ for everything right now because it was fairly trivial to switch over and any new projects I'm just defaulting to. The only thing I

don't like is that when you do VP, what is it? New or whatever. Whatever you use

is it? New or whatever. Whatever you use to scaffold the new project, it there's no way to scaffold it in the current folder. It always creates a

current folder. It always creates a second folder.

Okay.

But I'll log a bug for that.

For for me, I'm still waiting on full spelt support for this. Oh, yeah.

Oxint and format stuff. It's coming and it's it's starting to to come in here, but I'm still waiting on it like to fully replace ESLint. So, let's talk about like like why would Cloudflare

even want this tooling? They could have slot forked it. Um, they could have just made their own. They could have like Cloudflare itself has gotten so much better since they integrated Vit into

it. They have this awesome Cloudflare V

it. They have this awesome Cloudflare V plugin which allows you to access your environmental variables inside of it. It

you don't have to like fuss with like Webpack bundling. You can just rub run

Webpack bundling. You can just rub run TypeScript directly. It's gotten quite a

TypeScript directly. It's gotten quite a bit better and void zero themselves have kind of launched like two things right they launched V+ which we talked about and

then they also were working on on this product called void which was a way to like host or deploy applications and it was entirely built

on the like cloudflare stack.

Can we call void a framework?

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Void was a framework.

It was a JavaScript framework that had routing and still is. You're saying had, but it still is, right? Or

Well, like the thing is like it it was released private beta and then they got acquired. And like I I don't know, but I

acquired. And like I I don't know, but I doubt that they're actually going to release it because the thing was that it was all built on top of Cloudflare, but from asking them,

it didn't seem like the idea was that you could just use this tool to deploy to your own Cloudflare. it was that they were building their own cloud on top of of Cloudflare, right? A cloud flare.

But the framework components, the routing, the DB stuff, I don't think that's going anywhere. And like when when they first

anywhere. And like when when they first told us about it and how integrated it was into Cloudflare, my first thought was they're going to be acquired by Cloudare. Both of you guys have built

Cloudare. Both of you guys have built they're making something that Cloudflare wants because now that Cloudflare has acquired them they have everything front

end framework you know you can like you of course use fault or or react or whatever but also they have their own thing back end you can use Vue yeah I'm I hear

it worked with with V with uh Vit uh they got database caching key value off images video like we're trying to we were talking before this like what

doesn't Cloudflare have now?

Yeah, they got cues.

Q's uh durable objects real time. Some

of the stuff is like you have to do it the weird Cloudflare way. Yeah.

Um but it's kind of one-stop shop. I Yeah, I mentioned they don't have an like off platform like you can't host the your users there. You still might be using

users there. You still might be using something else. But

something else. But yeah, they have like Cloudflare access which is kind of like I use it as an a thing to to guard a lot of my apps. It's more

I don't I know it's like kind of a mix between like tail scale. You could

certainly use it for your applications.

You probably wouldn't, but like no, you're probably still reaching for like a better off something like that.

And better off is cooked into void.

Yeah, exactly. So they've they have tiptoail

exactly. So they've they have tiptoail all the pieces.

Is this tiptoail? Is it a one-stop shop?

Is it uh what are some other ones?

The vegan tip totail equivalent.

Yes.

Farm to table. From root to leaf.

From Yeah. Root to leaf. from root to leaf. Okay, they have all the pieces and

leaf. Okay, they have all the pieces and I I think that's exciting because OpenAI a couple weeks or last week launched this thing called OpenAI sites which essentially is like

you can you can make a site and you can deploy and it deploys to Cloudflare because Cloudflare has all the pieces and now Cloudflare has tip the tail all the pieces where it's a

nice tidy package that they can just hand over to an LLM and say like build me something deploy the thing use my access. You don't have to like reach

access. You don't have to like reach outside to any the sort of third party service. And I think that like

service. And I think that like infrastructure is like the last thing that the these LLM companies have not come for. And I don't know if they'll

come for. And I don't know if they'll ever be able to come forward because it's a lot easier to like vibe a some software versus like scaling infrastructure across all the

governments and and countries of the world. But you'd have to think that with

world. But you'd have to think that with the current way things are working, uh, root to leaf, you would be able to use an LLM to say, "Build me a site with

this stack and it's got everything."

Yeah. One-stop shop tip to tail. Yeah.

Yeah. That's the biggest sell is like obviously it we've talked about before it's vendor lock in, but that might be a good thing because they have everything you need. So like

you're you're not going to have to shop around. You're not going to have to find

around. You're not going to have to find different libraries and try to integrate them. Yeah,

them. Yeah, you use the void framework, you have access to all the infrastructure. I

think for anybody that's already using Cloudflare, this seems like a like a no-brainer.

And and for people who don't even know what Cloudflare is, they just type in the box, make me a site.

It's and like I think the best analogy is like it's the new Versel like Verscell made it easy to deploy backend apps.

Yeah.

And now Void with Cloudflare is doing the same thing but on Cloudflare instead of on AWS.

Yeah. So the other thing is that the Cloudflare has been working on their new CLI cuz Cloudflare CLI wrangler absolute dog like it's kind of hard to use you know

if anybody was thinking that episode was a a just a total Cloudflare love fest I've got things to say no and they know that because they've been working on a

new CLI called CF um that does everything um in Cloudflare. So you don't have to like

Cloudflare. So you don't have to like with Wrangler sometimes you have to like go to the the guey and select things and then you got to go back to the thing and sometimes if you do something in the UI

but then you you push something in your config file it overwrites your environ that's a that's a weird thing. Um and

like who's who's better at writing CLIs than than the Vit team, right? They vit

has been such a blessing to the web development scene of just making this frustrating hard stuff delightful and easy to use.

And like now I hope they they do that to the the Cloudflare CLI.

Cloudflare's got a crazy roster of talented people now.

Holy cow. If you add you add Evan to that next.

Yeah.

Like wow. Yeah. They've been cooking.

It's a testament to good engineering too. Like like for the past four years,

too. Like like for the past four years, whatever we've been saying like like programming is dead, but you see big companies like this acquiring really talented engineers. Like we still need

talented engineers. Like we still need really talented engineers.

Yeah. We don't need like the shitty ones like us, but they need the good ones.

Yeah. So I mean I don't notice here.

Yeah. But

it keeps me hopeful because I mean like so like Anthropic acquiring Bun and getting access to Jared Sumner like all the talent of the Bun team.

So It's interesting to see. It's like

they're saying one thing. It's going to replace developers, yet they're hiring developers and spending a lot of money to do it. So,

it's something to think about. I don't

know.

It's food for thought.

Food for thought.

Yes. So, the deal was announced in uh uh June 4th. Do we know anything about the

June 4th. Do we know anything about the deal?

No. No. I tried. I poked at a couple of them, but they they did not spill the beans. But I was luckily I knew about

beans. But I was luckily I knew about this before a lot of the folks at Cloudflare knew about it which was kind of exciting.

Yeah.

So, how how did that happen?

Well, don't get anybody in trouble.

Yeah. I don't want to I don't want to get anybody in trouble. No, I'm not not revealing my sources.

But yeah, that's good. Um

nice.

I think that's it.

Yeah. So, you want to wrap it up or Yeah, I I'll reiterate. So, like Vit, Vest, Roll Down, Oxy, Vit Plus, all of that still open source. They basically

acquired some of the core maintainers that were working on it cuz they were hired by vzero. But all of that's still open source, still MIT licensed. Like

none of that is owned by Cloudflare.

They're just paying the developers that are working on it a a decent salary.

The V core team not acquired separate. Yes.

separate. Yes.

And so and that's the other news like a million dollar what do they call it?

That V ecosystem fund. So they didn't acquire that team but a million dollars is going to the maintainers and anybody else working on it. Oh manion

plugins.

Maybe I could get some money like 100k. I would take 100k for my like

like 100k. I would take 100k for my like directory listing plugin or I have like a port killing plugin for V or like if something's running on the port it'll automatically kill it.

Um I would take 100K for that one too.

So maybe like maybe I'll dip into this fund for the ecos sake of the ecosystem.

I know I do have a a V1 that is a custom DSL plugin for a DSL that went nowhere and I I have to support because I use it on my personal website instead of just using one of the community ones. But

yeah.

Yeah, beautiful.

It mentioned in their post but also say it that like Vit still runs everywhere that that's why we love Vit from the beginning. It kind of like unified the

beginning. It kind of like unified the build process, made it super easy to build apps that's not tied to Cloudflare. You can still use it, build

Cloudflare. You can still use it, build your app, deploy to versel like manually, run your own server um for now.

For for now.

Well, okay. So, we have experience with this um syntax acquired by Century.

Yeah.

And that was part of the hardest thing of the messaging to let everyone know Century is not controlling.

We're controlling syntax. Our message

won't change. The only thing is we we won't be sponsored anymore. And I

remember there was a huge amount of stress around that announcement because we didn't want people to get the wrong impression.

Yeah. Um

yeah, you can tell that the V team was very clear about like it's not happening anywhere.

So I would I would have encouraged people not to jump to conclusions about that.

Can can we talk about the opposite though? If they were to like try to make

though? If they were to like try to make money off of VE, what would they do?

They turn it orange.

They No, they would charge for variables. So on on the team plan var

variables. So on on the team plan var free let you get 200 a month and only 50 cons you know you want immutability that's an enterprise feature

enterprise yes uh I think like what like what else would what else could you do uh yeah bundle size yeah you want it smaller pay us smaller bundles speed checks

you can only you can only do like two bundles or like um like a 100 millisecond delay in in hot reloading you know, remove that extra hundred bucks a month.

Or you could have it play a short ad while you're hot reloading.

Yes. Hot reload. Throw an ad up there.

You know, JS Nation tickets, the latest JS Nation would probably probably pay for that.

Yes.

All this is going to get clipped out of context and they're not going to know that we're joking.

Meat is going paid. Yeah. So, folks,

what's what what's the vibe? Leave

comments below. Let us know what the vibe is around this stuff. I personally

have positive feelings about all of this. So, let us know what you think.

this. So, let us know what you think.

I'm going to fork it into wheat.

I was going to say, what would the vibe slop name be?

Wheat.

Vit meetat.

Wheaties.

Yeah.

Well, it has to be. What's a cloud version of?

Yeah. So, I don't know. Vit is now cloud.

Cloud now.

Veer or better VIT.

Better V.

Better V. Better. I'm sure they have trademark on.

Can you trademark the word VIT though? I

think you can in the like tooling space.

Yeah.

All right. All right. That's all we got.

All right. Thanks for tuning in, folks.

Peace.