ReadTheDocs Became Proprietary Now?

Question

I went to https://readthedocs.org/ and redirected me to https://about.readthedocs.com/?ref=readthedocs.org which looks proprietary now, with pricing and such.Is it the end of this project, as we know it?Can someone enlighten me please?

japhyr · Accepted Answer

This has been available for a long time. I believe the paid plans are aimed at supporting documentation for private repositories, and private enterprise codebases. It's part of the long-term sustainability plan for supporting high-quality documentation for open projects.
The pricing page dates all the way back to at least 2015: https://web.archive.org/web/20150706045846/https://readthedo...
The archive version states that it's free for open projects, and that statement is still there today. I think most people just end up on rtd pages for specific projects, and never see the rtd home page (or pricing page).

tardibear · Answer

I agree, this doesn't look great, but there is still a free tier: https://about.readthedocs.com/pricing/#/community

tmaly · Answer

This is one case where something distributed would be of real benefit.