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How do you, or do you vet if a software will paywall features or "enshittify"? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/linux

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

A general checklist for flags that software will enshittify:

owned by publicly-traded company
backed by VC or other expecting sources of funding
product is closed-source
company tries to circumvent open-source licensing of product (often for financial gain)
product has transferred ownership to a different company (through monetary transaction or similar)
product incorporates DRM
organization that owns the product has a track record for bad behavior

On their own, not all of these flags are excellent indicators. Some are better than others in a vacuum. If you see a product start to check several of these flags, it might be time to jump ship early (to a fork or other competing project).