HTTPie creator here. Just a clarification: HTTPie is still under the same management, and the CLI doesn’t have any telemetry. Little Snitch is probably warning you about requests to packages.httpie.io/latest.json [0]. That is done to let you know when a new version becomes available. It’s a static file hosted through GitHub pages [1] without any tracking. However, there’s currently a bug [2] that prevents the response from getting cached so that the request fires frequently for some users. It’s already fixed in a PR [3] and will be part of the upcoming release.
I don’t know when you last tested the start-up time, but we significantly improved it in HTTPie CLI 3.0 [0]. Now it’s still slower by ~0.1s.
$ time http --version
3.2.2
real 0m0.113s
user 0m0.087s
sys 0m0.020s
$ time xh --version
xh 0.18.0
-native-tls +rustls
real 0m0.007s
user 0m0.002s
sys 0m0.002s
> Why is the license for this GUI tool so different than the license for their command line tool? The source isn’t even in this repository.
The desktop app is not ready to be open-sourced yet.
> There is 0% chance that this will avoid the route that POSTman and Insomnia have paved.
HTTPie has been around for 10+ years, and the new desktop product is built around the idea that we can do much better than the incumbents (from a much simpler interface and more pleasant UX to a more aligned set of incentives supporting incognito, free, as well as paying users/companies).
> WTF is it about these tools that the creators think will make us tolerate the sudden switch from free to paid? I am dead tired of watching this play out over and over.
What Postman and Insomnia did is not cool. But that does not mean it’s unavoidable. Even though it complicates development, we’re local-first from the very start. Accounts and sync are optional layers on top of it.
We have a PoC where the runtime is implemented in Python and the Electron and web apps use it through https://pyodide.org/. Still exploring but looks surprisingly viable.
We started httpie/desktop as a separate codebase but are working on unifying it with httpie/cli and our cloud to avoid multiple implementations by extracting a shared runtime that will be used everywhere. One of the interesting challenges here is that HTTPie Desktop is written in TypeScript while the rest is in Python.
> I think the issue is the posturing as open source, having a github repo with no code just to attract devs and look open source-y
As the first paragraph in the README says, we use the GitHub repo to host releases and issues.
Having it on GitHub under the same organization as our other projects that already are open-source is convenient for both us and our users — https://github.com/httpie.
> and even sharing it on HackerNews right after the issues with closed source by Postman too. Feels like an "open source alternative", but not really, hence the sketchy accusation.
The person who shared it is not related to HTTPie.
Given the quality of the discourse here, I almost wish they did not! ;-)
You probably don't need all of them. But we've created HTTPie Desktop based on the feedback of HTTPie CLI users over the past decade who wanted to have the same comfort on the desktop as they do in the terminal. The feedback we've been receiving from devs actually using has been incredible.
> Can you be more clear? Is the Desktop app going to be open-source in the future? If so, what license?
Yes, but have no ETA or license choice yet.
> Do you intend to monetize this product? If so, how?
Yes. We strongly believe in a freemium where both free and premium users are happy. We’ll primarily monetize collaboration and enterprise features without cannibalizing free users. In this sense, we’re inspired by companies like GitHub or Figma. And in our case, free also includes users without an account.
> As a side note: I find it strange that you feel the product is not stable enough to share the code, but apparently stable enough to share the product itself.
Running an open-source project well is not easy and takes resources. Building a great product is hard on its own. Our primary goal is to design and build the best API product possible, so we direct all our energy there for now.
> You gave this exact same answer to me in your Discord a year ago. If nothing sketchy is going on why not just open source the thing?
We appreciate your interest, but we never gave an ETA. I do regret having made the intention public, though.
> At a minimum you should remove the banner at the bottom of the page claiming it's open source.
That’s a good point. As I wrote in another comment below: I’ve now updated the website template not to show the image with the slogan on this page. Thanks for the feedback.
We show the request/response in two separate panes, each with a menu offering Copy and Download actions. So it’s possible; it’s just a matter of multiple clicks.
The desktop app also allows you to copy a corresponding HTTPie CLI command, which you can then enrich with --verbose, run in the terminal, and more easily copy the whole exchange output.