[sva_]

>YOU CANNOT BUY COMMUNITY.

This is false. Communities get sold successfully all the time (thing of tech giants buying up unicorns or whatever). But doing that with a (predominantly) FOSS community was definitely doomed from the start.

[handrous]

It's less that the communities were FOSS than that it was built on a widely-implemented, stable, open protocol. Moving to a new server means everyone takes 30 seconds to add the new server and join the new channel, but keeps using the same client. Maybe you have to change a line of config on some bots and restart them. Done.

We see fewer of those developed now precisely because it forces providers (free or paid) to behave well or else be easily abandoned. Facebook, Twitter, Google, et c., do not want that, for obvious reasons.