You have some points but I think you’re overexposed to forks and drama by being in these communities. Most OSS works and steadily improves and becomes a reliable tool. Closed software often gets better but often gets worse with bloat, subscription models, etc. I think that closed software does more harm to the utility and reliability of their products than open software.
A streamer using OBS doesn’t worry about drama or forks, but they know they have to switch to Windows 11 with new hardware requirements and ads built in. A commuter using the Transit app (OSM map data) doesn’t care about where the maps came from, but they know when the app has a bug, they have nowhere to turn to get it fixed. A 3D animator sees Blender steadily improve and knows if they switch to Adobe, they’ll have to pay increasingly high subscription costs to keep using it. Any individual project is not forking all the time. You just know about it when it happens to any project, whether you use the software or not.
You’re not wrong, but I think it isn’t a linear relation. It’s probably small projects having a lot of infighting and then it tapers off as it grows, and then it probably spikes again as it gets too big to handle as a small group but big enough that people in the group disagree and then tapers off again once it becomes a staple or so big it has some foundation or company attached to it.
I guess my worry, overexposure aside, is for the fizzy awkward transition bits in there impacting the perception of the whole thing, but while Organic was pretty big it’s still true that the vast majority of people have no idea it exists.
You have some points but I think you’re overexposed to forks and drama by being in these communities. Most OSS works and steadily improves and becomes a reliable tool. Closed software often gets better but often gets worse with bloat, subscription models, etc. I think that closed software does more harm to the utility and reliability of their products than open software.
A streamer using OBS doesn’t worry about drama or forks, but they know they have to switch to Windows 11 with new hardware requirements and ads built in. A commuter using the Transit app (OSM map data) doesn’t care about where the maps came from, but they know when the app has a bug, they have nowhere to turn to get it fixed. A 3D animator sees Blender steadily improve and knows if they switch to Adobe, they’ll have to pay increasingly high subscription costs to keep using it. Any individual project is not forking all the time. You just know about it when it happens to any project, whether you use the software or not.
You’re not wrong, but I think it isn’t a linear relation. It’s probably small projects having a lot of infighting and then it tapers off as it grows, and then it probably spikes again as it gets too big to handle as a small group but big enough that people in the group disagree and then tapers off again once it becomes a staple or so big it has some foundation or company attached to it.
I guess my worry, overexposure aside, is for the fizzy awkward transition bits in there impacting the perception of the whole thing, but while Organic was pretty big it’s still true that the vast majority of people have no idea it exists.