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Joined 5 months ago
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Cake day: December 3rd, 2024

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  • For those that didn’t read the paper, they are literally attempting to calculate the monetary value of top open source projects.

    We first estimate the supply-side value by calculating the cost to recreate the most widely used OSS once. We then calculate the demand- side value based on a replacement value for each firm that uses the software and would need to build it internally if OSS did not exist. We estimate the supply-side value of widely-used OSS is $4.15 billion, but that the demand-side value is much larger at $8.8 trillion. We find that firms would need to spend 3.5 times more on software than they currently do if OSS did not exist.

    This is the huge takeaway for me. Open Source saves companies and organizations so much money because it allows them to not have to make that component themselves. Having open standards literally saves the economy trillions of dollars not having to “reinvent the wheel”.



  • That sucks. I know what it’s like to feel like the only voice of reason when your company is shooting itself in the foot.

    I see from other comments you’re already looking for a new job, which is a very good idea. From your description of this buyout, it seems very likely that you’re about 6 months to a year out from the layoff stage of the private equity playbook.

    At the end of the day you’ll always have the experience you gained from building all that stuff. Perhaps you’ll get a chance to build it back even better somewhere else!




  • 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.