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.
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).
A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world 1 week ago
You’re looking at paying to self-host a cloud?
I’m so confused