[nightpool]

Sure, I don't see where in my comment I imply this is a problem for all open source communities, just that it's a problem for the type of open source community John seems to want Ghost to be (no intellectual property, making revenue via providing services).

For #1, that is the kind of logic that works fine for the early adopters, but frustrates and turns away the people who just want e.g. a Substack that won't squeeze them for login walls or a Wordpress that is easier to use. I've seen a lot of non-technical people in that bucket turned away recently by Ghost (Pro)'s opaque and confusing member-based hosting costs. It makes it completely impractical to run a free email newsletter, and plenty of other Ghost providers seem to have this worked out. So all it takes is one of those competitors breaking through to achieve name recognition and get a lucky roll of the marketing dice to overtake Ghost in revenue. And then they can fund their own fork and the Ghost community is forced to agree to their development wishes or become outpaced by their proprietary features. It's a pretty bad place to be in.