For those that have poked around other fediverse stuff beyond Lemmy, and been around the spaces awhile, what’s stuck out to you as stumbling blocks, or basic user experience fumbles? Which parts do you think may be technical, and which may be cultural?
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.