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.

  • jrgd@lemm.ee
    1·
    21 days 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).