hello everyone, i have a fun question

would sites that are now hugely successful have been just as successful had they started as open sourced initiatives?

Speaking off the top of my head, I would imagine it very hard for some portion of the currently successful sites to be as successful had they started as open-sourced initiatives, just because of the problem of keeping a site’s main focus/purpose/direction unified among all of the potential contributors/maintainers. I don’t think this factor would prevent a successful site from becoming as successful, but I do think the rate at which a site would become successful could be slower. Having said that, this hypothetical seems like it could run various paths depending on what successful site you are talking about. Open-source Amazon seems like a very different thing to talk about then open-source Twitter

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