[alganet]

A "SaaS app" is something rather new. In the old times (early 2000s), you would buy some proprietary server code and get a consultant to install/maintain it for you.

I think vBulletin still operates on this model, although they now offer it as a service too. phpBB is the oldest alternative to vBulletin, there are plenty.

Eventually all these CMSs from the 2000s were cloned and freed in some way or another. Our "SaaS" was cpanel which automagically installed these (they were THIS close to "serverless", if they only knew). By 2010, people barely knew what MovableType was.

cpanel is gone, shared hosting is gone, but that cloned freed CMS tech evolved and still powers a large chunk of the web.

Why doesn't it happen now? I don't know. Maybe it takes time, maybe that was a lucky decade, maybe it's happening in some place I'm not looking at.

[thecrash]

It's because the SaaS offerings are free and good quality. Reddit, Slack, Medium, Etsy, etc are better experiences than self hosting for most use cases.

This isn't permanent, though - these services are getting enshittified and the FOSS alternatives are gradually improving. I think you're right that it takes time and a tipping point will eventually be reached just as it was in the 2010s.