I feel a change is happening in how people produce and (want to) consume software, and I want to give my two cents on the matter.

It has become more mainstream to see people critical of "Big Tech". Enshittification has become a familiar term even outside the geek community. Obnoxious "AI" features that nobody asked for get crammed into products. Software that spies on its users is awfully common. Software updates have started crippling existing features, or have deliberately stopped being available, so more new devices can be sold. Finally, it is increasingly common to get obnoxious ads shoved in your face, even in software you have already paid for.

In short, it has become hard to really trust software. It often does not act in the user’s best interest. At the same time, we are entrusting software with more and more of our lives.

Thankfully, new projects are springing up which are using a different governance model. Instead of a for-profit commercial business, there is a non-profit backing them. Some examples of more or less popular projects:

• Signal and Matrix for instant messaging,
• Bluesky and Mastodon for social media,
• Mozilla for web browser, e-mail client and more,
• Proton for e-mail hosting, VPN and more,
• Codeberg for code repository hosting,
• Wikipedia and Internet Archive for all the world’s knowledge.

Some of these are older projects, but there seems to be something in the air that is causing more projects to move to non-profit governance, and for people to choose these.

As I was preparing this article, I saw an announcement that ghostty now has a non-profit organisation behind it. At the same time, I see more reports from developers leaving GitHub for Codeberg, and in the mainstream more and more people are switching to Signal.

Why free and open source software is not enough

From a user perspective, free software and open source software (FOSS) has advantages over proprietary software. For instance, you can study the code to see what it does. This alone can deter manufacturers from putting in user-hostile features. You can also remove or change what you dislike or add features you would like to see. If you are unable to code, you can usually find someone else to do it for you.

Unfortunately, this is not enough. Simply having the ability to see and change the code does not help when the program is a web service. Network effects will ensure that the "main instance" is the only viable place to use this; you have all your data there, and all your friends are there. And hosting the software yourself is hard for non-technical people. Even highly technical people often find it too much of a hassle.

Also, code can be very complex! Often, only the team behind it can realistically further develop it. This means you can run it yourself, but still are dependent on the manufacturer for the direction of the product. This is how you get, for example, AI features in GitLab and ads in Ubuntu Linux. One can technically remove or disable those features, but it is hard to keep such a modified version (a fork) up with the manufacturer’s more desirable changes.

The reason is that the companies creating these products are still motivated by profit and increasing shareholder value. As long as the product still provides (enough) value, users will put up with misfeatures. The (perceived) cost of switching is too high.

Non-profit is not a panacea

Let us say a non-profit is behind the software. It is available under a 100% FOSS license. Then there are still ways things can go south. I think this happens most commonly if the funding is not in order.

For example, Mozilla is often criticised for receiving funding from Google. In return, it uses Google as the default search. To make it less dependent on Google, Mozilla acquired Pocket and integrated it into the browser. It also added ads on the home screen. Both of these actions have also been criticized. I do not want to pick on Mozilla (I use Firefox every day). It has clearly been struggling to make ends meet in a way that is consistent with its goals and values.

I think the biggest risk factor is (ironically) if the non-profit does not have a sustainable business model and has to rely on funding from other groups. This can compromise the vision, like in Mozilla’s case. For web software, the obvious business model is a SaaS platform that offers the software. This allows the non-profit to make money from the convenience of not having to administer it yourself.

What about volunteer driven efforts?

Ah, good old volunteer driven FOSS. Personally, I prefer using such software in general. There is no profit motive in sight and the developers are just scratching their own itch. Nobody is focused on growth and attracting more customers. Instead, the software does only what it has to do with a minimum of fuss.

I love that aspect, but it is also a problem. Developers often do not care about ease of use for beginners. Software like this is often a power tool for power users, with lots of sharp edges. Perfect for developers, not so much for the general public.

More importantly, volunteer driven FOSS has other limits. Developer burn-out happens more than we would like to admit, and for-profit companies tend to strip-mine the commons.

There are some solutions available for volunteer-driven projects. For example Clojurists together, thanks.dev, the Apache Foundation, the Software Freedom Conservancy and NLNet all financially support volunteer-driven projects. But it is not easy to apply to these, and volunteer-driven projects are often simply not organized in a way to receive money.

Conclusion

With a non-profit organisation employing the maintainers of a project, there is more guarantee of continuity. It also can ensure that the "boring" but important work gets done. Good interface design, documentation, customer support. All that good stuff. If there are paying users, I expect that you get some of the benefits of corporate-driven software and less of the drawbacks.

That is why I believe these types of projects will be the go-to source for sustainable, trustworthy software for end-users. I think it is important to increase awareness about such projects. They offer alternatives to Big Tech software that are palatable to non-technical users.