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>> It's obvious to me that a corporation backed or foundation backed opensource project is always preferable to one lead by a single person that will sooner or

>> It's obvious to me that a corporation backed or foundation backed opensource project is always preferable to one lead by a single person that will sooner or later abandon the whole thing. I've been working on a popular open source project for 3 years and I have no plans of stopping. There are only three conditions which would cause me to quit: 1. People stop using it. 2. I become physically/mentally incapacitated. 3. I die. Also, I'm sure someone from the community would step up and take over of the project if I got hit by a bus. I think that there is no correlation (single person vs corporation); there are pros and cons in both cases. Hapi was backed by Walmart Labs (corporation). SailsJS started running into issues with their community precisely when things started to get commercial. I think that a lot of popular 'single person' (started by a single person) projects might actually last longer because the original authors tend to feel more responsible to the people/companies who have entrusted them personally. Also, in the single-person scenario, the author might perceive 100 users as being a lot; while a corporation might think that 10K users is not a lot. Small projects not backed by corporations are usually more tight-knit.

_pmf_ 10y ago
> 2. I become physically/mentally incapacitated. You're lucky if your job does not wear you down to the point at which this is the case; most people are not.
- ekryski 10y ago
  Sure, but it's about balance and setting expectations with the users of your open source framework. Being transparent and delegating responsibility. Your project can only scale as well as you can and that is limited by the number of hours in the day. It's called "open source" for a reason and typically the nature of open source is not money but shared knowledge and contributions. If you're looking for money it probably should just be closed source.

_pmf_ 10y ago

> 2. I become physically/mentally incapacitated. You're lucky if your job does not wear you down to the point at which this is the case; most people are not.

ekryski 10y ago
Sure, but it's about balance and setting expectations with the users of your open source framework. Being transparent and delegating responsibility. Your project can only scale as well as you can and that is limited by the number of hours in the day. It's called "open source" for a reason and typically the nature of open source is not money but shared knowledge and contributions. If you're looking for money it probably should just be closed source.