this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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I love the idea of Lemmy itself being FOSS but individual instances and apps being a competitive marketplace of for profit businesses.
That way profitable entities with skin in the game can contribute back to the core, as can anyone, while ensuring the communities exist on servers that actually have some kind of monetization.
Exactly! This is the playbook for how Linux has gained such a mainstay - while GNU/Linux on the desktop may still be pretty small, the extensibility and open-source nature of the platform has meant it's been able to take over on all sort of alternative platforms - Android and Steam Deck being the big ones in the consumer space, but also larger distros being used regularly in enterprise/web hosting.
If everyone had refused to embrace Android or Steam Deck or any of the other distros run and maintained by for-profit corporations due to some preconceived idea of what the 'correct' way to use Linux is, it would still be doomed to irrelevance outside of tech circles.
Red Hat is the 800lb gorilla in the room in that aspect. They put out a rock-solid product and their support is probably the best I've ever used regardless of any other factor.
They also pretty much own the Government/Gov Contractor Linux space because of the support and how simple it is to apply STIGs.