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Comment by jongjong | Hacker News Reader

Corporate influence on open source has served to narrow down the tools that are able to gain adoption, irrespective of their utility, often going against what users want.

For example, many developers despise React.js; I once interviewed for a dev role for Facebook years ago and they asked me if "I had any qualms about using React" (paraphrasing) and the interviewer acknowledged that many candidates did not like using React... Yet React has a near-monopoly on frontend frameworks.

The whole media landscape around open source dev tools has been a nightmare. We're being pushed in specific directions, towards a small number of silver bullet solutions which do not suit most use cases.

It feels like all the authors of popular tools form a corporate insider clique and no tools outside of that social network is allowed to get any traction at all.

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> Corporate influence on open source has served to narrow down the tools that are able to gain adoption

Adoption by whom?

What is it that you think wider adoption of open source would (or should) look like without corporate influence?

What is your measure of success there, and do you have any examples of this happening? What open source products have "gained adoption" without corporate influence?

I think there are a variety of tools like LibreOffice, GIMP, and various more minor things that have mostly been developed after-hours or completely outside of corporate developers but they're almost certainly in the minority when it comes to major projects. (And one can reasonably argue that those two examples aren't especially successful.)

Yep and these are well known because they existed for a long time before the media monopoly. There are newer tools which we never hear about. Once in a while I come across some website of curated indie SaaS solutions and it's unbelievable what exists. Yet this massive ecosystem is probably just one bubble out of hundreds.

You only hear about the tools which received VC funding. It is VC-funding first, then traction, not the other way around as they try to portray it. You can always connect the founders socially to insiders prior to their launching and raising funding. Some failed multiple ventures yet keep receiving funding... but among those which succeed, there is almost always a social connection.

Even in cases where I met a founder who I believed to be 'self-made', turns out there's a story behind him like his wife's parents had sold their company for millions and his brother rubs shoulders with celebrities.

LibreOffice traces back to the commercial StarOffice. Unlikely any after-hours project build something of that complexity from scratch

There are also a few businesses e.g. Collabora that pay LibreOffice developers today.

Rewind 5 to 10 years, there were a lot of open source tools which gained adoption within startup or hobbyist communities. As some of the startups grew and merged with corporations, they seems to have slowly abandoned certain tools and software for no reason besides corporate compliance.

Nowadays, even startups use corporate tools. It's a total media echo-chamber. Everything outside of that is treated as if it doesn't exist. There are some great tools out there which solve real problems but they have few users because nobody can find out about them.

Are you saying startups aren't also corporations?

Obviously I'm referring to the big ones. That said, most startups aren't corporations. A lot of founders wait until money start coming in before footing the registration costs.

I mean, adoption by anyone right?

Although adoption I think is largely a matter of marketing. Outside of more people willing to search into open source alternatives themselves, or contribute more to open source projects... what else is there to foster adoption?

If corporate entities weren't doing that, then it would have to be non-corporate entities doing that. No?

I just can't think of any "widely-adopted" open source projects that are not corporate influenced in some way.

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