[poulsbohemian]

I mean, your skepticism isn't wrong as it's a definite catch-22... people want tools to share and create their own content, but those tools cost money which means someone has to get paid, at which point the vendors start thinking in terms of greater lock-in and embrace-and-extend opportunities, and the cycle repeats itself.

[shiroiuma]

This was supposed to be the promise of open-source software: people making tools to share with everyone for free, so people don't need to pay vendors just to do something simple.

However, while software can be made free and open-source, someone still has to pay for servers to run for any of this stuff to work. These things were easier back in the good ol' days when everyone just used university computer resources. Nowadays, university tuition has skyrocketed, while universities are no longer freely hosting internet resources like before, I guess because they need to pay their deans millions and build really fancy new dorms.