I don’t understand. These businesses gained what popularity/reach they have in large part by chanting the Open Source mantra. Then, when they’re (at least moderately?) successful, they close up and the mantra falls silent. How is that a good decision? It necessarily alienates users, who have probably come to depend upon the openness. It’s a knife in the back to the rest of the open source community. For what? More profits? But if they gained a moderately successful position through positioning themselves as open source, how are they going to profit from basically throwing up their hands and saying just kidding guys ha ha that was a mistake all along?
I mean, I understand the enshittification point. Perhaps this is yet another example of that. Chalk up yet another victim to the financialization of literally everything.
I suspect the salient point is that early adopters are more likely to care about openness, both practically and philosophically; but as the bell curve fattens, you include hobbyists-following-tutorials, who only care about specific practical outcomes.
That sounds about right. But wouldn’t the increasingly non-openness affect a hobbyist’s ability to get things done (the practical side as you said, rather than the philosophical side), or does it really not matter in the end for somebody just tinkering?
I mean, I understand the enshittification point. Perhaps this is yet another example of that. Chalk up yet another victim to the financialization of literally everything.