Second, the unfortunate reality of the software and hardware industries is that funding for the public commons is nearly non-existent. To get anything done, it either has to serve the interests of some company, or has to get done by tricking leadership of one or more companies into believing that their interests are best served by expanding the public commons.

So yeah, lots of folks in the industry have to walk the line between doing good within a system, and that system being extractionist.

Point being, I'm not criticizing specific individuals here. While I think there are some specific individuals who have made this situation demonstrably worse, on purpose, and for their own personal ends, that's not germane here, and so I'll keep those specifics to myself for now.

Rather, I want to talk about exit strategies.

Because let's face it, we depend on some pretty fucked up shit in software development. Much of the shit that we depend on that isn't currently and actively fucked up is in immediate danger of becoming fucked up, a la OpenAI buying out Astral.

So it's a matter of knowing how, when you adopt a new tool or technology or whatever else, you will eventually stop using it.

Using GitHub was great back in the day. They gave OSS projects a lot of free shit that was hard to get elsewhere. But it's clear in retrospect that we needed more and better exit strategies.

With the Astral buyout, it's a good reminder that uv came with very sensible exit strategies almost built-in: reliance on openly developed and published specs. But that only works because PDM exists, and that in turn only works because PEPs are collaboratively developed, and so forth.

@pinskia There's a difference between learning your lesson and affording it. GitHub meant I didn't need to spend time managing a VCS, paying for hosting, and the like, I could get to the brass tacks of writing my project.

That's not for nothing.

@lispi314 @pinskia Right, but I don't think it's irrational for someone starting a new project circa 2010 to use a subsidized system and getting to work on their project instead of building out that glue.

My point was that what I think *was* irrational was not having an exit strategy, perhaps such as building that better system out in parallel.

@lispi314 @pinskia Part of where I think I disagree is the separation between what's irrational for an individual under limited resources and what's irrational for a community writ large.

Like I no longer say "just use Linux," but rather "have an exit plan for when Windows or macOS are no longer options." The world would be better with more people using Linux, hands-down, and in many ways it's already more usable than Windows or macOS.

But not everyone is in a good position to challenge that.