Obviously we all want to avoid enshittified (aggressively monetized) software or at least get our money’s worth. I’m looking at self-hosting software right now and one I’m looking has a pricing page but only for cloud (no other paywalled features) and is open source. I tried looking up future plans and didn’t find much, so it doesn’t seem like it will enshittify. (not related) I had thought about switching to Omnivore for a long time but then they merged with ElevenLabs and the rest is history.

  • teri@discuss.tchncs.de
    1·
    10 days ago

    Green flags:

    • copyleft license (GPL or better AGPL) + they accept contributions without contributor license agreement
    • code written by many people who personally own the copyright
    • active community

    Yellow flags:

    • permissive license
    • business model which can’t be really be sustainable with a shit-free product

    Red flags:

    • VC funding (implies enshittification in future because of profit maximization)
    • proprietary license
    • project does not take contribution from the outside or asks to transfer copyright or sign some document (CLA)
  • liliumstar@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    10 days ago

    My basic check is: Are there investors / vc people involved? If so, then it will inevitably enshittify. If not, then requires further investigation. OSI-approved open source is a big plus

    Even when choosing what seems like good software, I think it’s important to consider switching costs. How easily can you move to another solution, say the second pick, if things go south?

  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
    1·
    10 days ago

    Enshittification is built-in to Capitalism, the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall forces it. FOSS and whatnot is safe.

        • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
          1·
          10 days ago

          Android, Chromium.

          The problem is that:

          1. Google puts in more development power than anyone else. Any forks we’ve seen so far are only really soft forks, as in they only apply a few patches on top of what Google puts out, rather than taking the project in a new direction, because you’d be behind pretty quickly.
          2. These projects establish platforms that have shitty decisions baked in. For example, the Android dev tooling has Google ads/tracking as one of the built-in UI components, which is why even if you patch the OS, the apps will still be shitty. To actually change this stuff, you’d need a majority of users to switch to your fork and stay there for a few years.
          3. Partially, it’s only financially viable for Google to develop these projects, because they have those Android ads or benefit from a web with less tracking protection. This makes it extremely unlikely for any other organization to be able to splurge a similar amount of money, which brings us back to a fork just being unlikely.

          And so long as a fork is unlikely, Google can do shitfuckery quite similar to proprietary projects.