Obviously we all want to avoid enshittified (aggressively monetized) software or at least get our money’s worth. I’m looking at self-hosting software right now and one I’m looking has a pricing page but only for cloud (no other paywalled features) and is open source. I tried looking up future plans and didn’t find much, so it doesn’t seem like it will enshittify. (not related) I had thought about switching to Omnivore for a long time but then they merged with ElevenLabs and the rest is history.
Agreed. The downside of community developed software is it can very easily die. All too often almost all of the work is done by one or a few very active people. When they stop working on the project it’s a matter of luck if someone is willing to take it on. I’ve lost more than a few good tools that way.