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.

  • renegadesporkAEnglish
    5·
    2 hours ago

    You can never be 100% sure, but there are protective factors that make it less likely, and they mostly boil down to incentive structure:

    • Ownership - Is the project run by a non-profit? A for-profit company? A hobbyist? This is the best indicator of a project’s long-term trajectory, because it generally indicates the purpose behind creating it.
    • Business model - How does the project make money? Donations? Subscription? One time payment? Generally models where you can outright purchase a copy of a particular version is insulated against future updates you don’t like. Donations protect against exploitation, but run the risk of the project being unsustainable and abandoned.
    • Source - Open source code isn’t a silver bullet, but (especially with good licensing) it can make enshittification less likely as it’s a lot easier for dissenters to spin up a fork / competitor. It also makes it very difficult to hide sketchy stuff like data collection and back doors.
    • Red flags - You should avoid anything that is SaaS, backed by an investment firm, or publicly traded. All of these involve incentive structures that encourage and reward exploitation of consumers and employees for increasing profit margins.