Let’s say Lemmy acquires the critical mass of users, continues to gain in popularity. Eventually someone will offer a large sum of money, the platform grows, new owners look towards an IPO, the goals shift, yadayada… How is different this time?
Let’s say Lemmy acquires the critical mass of users, continues to gain in popularity. Eventually someone will offer a large sum of money, the platform grows, new owners look towards an IPO, the goals shift, yadayada… How is different this time?
In short, Lemmy is free and open source software licensed under a copyleft license. It is “owned” by anyone who has contributed to the software, must remain open source - meaning the code must always be available - which means companies cannot profit off it.
Some corporate structure cannot take the code, change it, and hide it in order to create some for-profit Lemmy, as it is against the legal licensing. Any changes made to the code must be made public as well. Anyone can spin up their own Lemmy instance.
Copyleft licenses like the GPL protect the users from capitalist profit motive as best as it can under capitalism. It can never be taken over, controlled, or made into an IPO to satisfy investors. It’s entirely controlled by its communities!