this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2023
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Controversial and probably unpopular opinion:
I'm someone who hates advertising with a burning and seething passion, and I'm no lover of capitalism, but from a systemic standpoint there's a reason most open source projects burn out and go nowhere, and for-profit businesses have a higher chance of survival, because there's direct incentives (you know money/food) to keep making commercial software and increasing it's user base, but there isn't for hobbyist and open source software. Especially in the case of a social network that is only as valuable as the content and users on it, this might be a long term systemic issue.
You know like 50% of new businesses fail within 5 years, right? I don't have stats on open source projects, but it seems to me those are more likely to fail because they're run by one person who loses interest than because they don't have a profit motive.
Yes, that is a remarkably low failure rate. 99.9% of open source projects sit unused and abandoned after 5 years.
They're run by one person because they don't have a profit motive, so they don't need to hire QA, market research etc. etc. All the parts of a software company that help to keep continuously developing their software and make sure users are happy.
Dude, yes, they're run by one person because it's a hobby. This is like saying 99.9% of stories don't get published because there was no profit motive. There usually isn't when it starts, just a drive to create or fill a perceived void, or even just practice. I write damn near every day with zero profit motive.
Linux wasn't started with a profit motive. None of the open source BSDs were either. As far as I can tell, they're still not particularly profit motivated. Neither are a lot of other open source projects that have lasted ages. Where's the profit motive behind Bash? It's been around for 34 years.
An inability to pay bills can stop a person from working on a project, but at the end of the day it's usually not profit that keeps an open source project alive. It's popularity and passion.
None of what you wrote argues against what I wrote. I didn't say that open source projects can't be successful, I pointed out that they do not have the same structural incentives to continue or to keep changing to suit their users.
There also haven't been many open source consumer facing applications that have seen the success that backend and low level systems have. Largely because stuff like Linux / BSD / Bash / etc are built to serve specific functions with clear technical criteria that can be specified, met, and checked off a procurement list. Social networks and consumer facing applications on the other hand have to delight their users and keep them opening them up rather than any competitive distractions. That's not a clear technical problem that an engineer can crank away at and implement, that's an ongoing fuzzier problem that requires more stuff along the lines of continuous market research and product development.
And while yes, in some cases it's just purely popularity and passion that drive open source projects, in many many many ongoing open source projects it's in reality, corporations funding their development (directly or through employee eng time) because they've built some of their infrastructure on it and it's cheaper to pool infrastructure resources than try to build their own version.
It's a nice narrative that Reddit became Reddit just because it was this greatly built platform that served as the perfect forum for everything, but the reality is that during Reddit's growth face they did a ton of stuff to juice usage, like create fake comments and manipulate upvote downvote counts to make it seem like more people were engaging with your stuff, etc. And Reddit still exists as a competitor that is actively trying to take Lemmy's user base back. Don't get me wrong, I'm here because I prefer a transparent, non-engagement driven algorithm and am doing my part to contribute here and not on Reddit, but I'm also not blind to the structural headwinds that Lemmy / the wider fediverse will have to overcome.
Fair enough.
There are a lot of fediverse projects that could really really use some marketing to explain what they're doing and who they are for. And for developers, hey, I hate corporations but I'm generous. I would absolutely subscribe for features or perks or whatever.