I think one general benefit of open source is that in general - they are built for the user rather than for the stakeholders.

If Spotify was an open source app - you know for sure you would be able to hide podcasts for example (for people who don’t care about podcasts and just want a music experience). However, since for Spotify The Business it’s better to piss off X% of their users if Y% of their users turn into podcast users - they’re not going care about the angry X%.

So in general - in open source apps you’ll generally find features users actually want and very rarely the app will try to push new features on you because they’re trying to make numbers look good on their quarterly report.

European here. Telegram and FB Messenger is used by everyone even for iPhone to iPhone communication.

Stop trying to beat the market. Invest in a cheap global index fund and just keep buying.

Most of the aspects have already been covered but I would want to add one:

This was always the plan, it just wasn’t as highly prioritised as growth.

I work as a developer at a big tech company. We (the company) had our roadmap and it was mostly about getting more users. The more users you have the day the economy turns - the better off you are (… If you manage to turn an profit).

So when the economy went to shit and we (and other tech companies) no longer can loan money for free to cover our running expenses - the priorities shift. Working towards attracting more users is only going to increase your costs at the point and you don’t want to run out of money. So all roadmaps changed and cost saving efforts became the highest prio all of the sudden.

You are used to a time where money was essentially free for companies. Whenever they needed money, they could loan money almost for free.

As interest rates are up, that’s no longer the case and priorities have changed from growth to plugging holes.

Definitely will die. I just don’t see how instances will be supported financially. The fediverse is nice but at the end of the day, the instances are running somewhere and there are bills to pay.

Ironically, people who have managed to do this would not see your question