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Open Social — overreacted

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Open source has clearly won. Yes, there are plenty of closed source products and businesses. But the shared infrastructure—the commons—runs on open source. We might take this for granted, but it wasn’t a foregone conclusion thirty five years ago. There were powerful forces that wanted open source to lose. Some believed in the open source model but didn’t think it could ever compete with closed source. Many categories of tools only existed as closed source. A Microsoft CEO called open source cancer—a decade before Microsoft has rebuilt its empire around it. The open source movement may not have lived up to the ideals of the “free software”, but it won in industry adoption. Nobody gets fired for choosing open source these days. For much crucial software, open source is now the default. I believe we are at a similar juncture with social apps as we have been with open source thirty five years ago. There’s a new movement on the block. I like to call it “open social”. There are competing vis

Open Social — overreacted Open Social September 26, 2025 Pay what you like Watch on YouTube Open source has clearly won. Yes, there are plenty of closed source products and businesses. But the shared infrastructure—the commons—runs on open source. We might take this for granted, but it wasn’t a foregone conclusion thirty five years ago. There were powerful forces that wanted open source to lose. Some believed in the open source model but didn’t think it could ever compete with closed source. Many categories of tools only existed as closed source. A Microsoft CEO called open source cancer—a dec

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