[monkeydust]

I wouldn't underestimate the community effect of software. There are plenty of features that get shipped because a small but important minority requested them, only to benefit the long tail of users who never knew to ask for such a feature but now find it indispensable. If everyone is building their own isolated solutions, how does this positive externality manifest itself?

[sublinear]

Much of the business world sees that as very high risk.

In their eyes, community moderation is an inverted pendulum that eventually falls over. Either one niche and unprofitable direction dominates, or the community turns it into an incoherent junk drawer of features. You're also opening yourself up to competitors poisoning the whole thing. To investors, it signals a lack of vision.

Feedback isn't inherently good or bad, but it can be unnecessary risk if you already know you have a solid product that meets the most common use cases with the strongest demand.

This is why successful products tend to be very mediocre. They're the average of all insights considered. Doing anything else is leaving money on the table.

To answer your question, nobody wants their product to become the platform that launches your directly competing product. That's suicide. You're asking to ride someone else's coattails.

[dijksterhuis]

my experience in b2b SaaS is that a small but vocal minority are usually asking for features that the majority don’t want nor need.

the features that affect the long tail can come from vocal complaints, but the best usually are ones you have to go asking around to find out about.

the really important people to ask have seemed to be the ones who don’t know how to ask or assumed they aren’t allowed to ask or something.

YMMV

[lowbloodsugar]

And far too many that don’t because only I want them. It’s why I built my own harness: my PRs were never accepted upstream.

[skybrian]

Perhaps as open source software, but it would require building a community that agrees on some common procedures about what to build and how to use AI.