Vaguely similar to the notion of an “alive” business and a “dead” one, I look at any application or website with a community in the same light: the second that

Vaguely similar to the notion of an “alive” business and a “dead” one, I look at any application or website with a community in the same light: the second that some suit-wearing MBA is allowed to alienate the power users, the contributors, the developers, or the equivalent, it’s downhill into inevitable doom from there. Sure, the bulk of the user pyramid might be retained — for a while — but the peak is where the action was. Like the growing shoot at the end of a branch, that’s where new applications are written, new content is produced, and new markets are created. The rest just consumes, uses, and follows. Microsoft is insisting on driving away their most important but least numerous users as hard and as fast as they possibly can. No metrics will show the consequences of these decisions, and no one will be punished for tragically abusing the commons. I tiny vocal minority is lost, sure, but who cares? They were troublemakers and hard to market to! Good riddance. The uptake of the each new Windows version is slower and slower than the one before. The excitement and innovation has been replaced by telemetry and built in crapware. People stood in line to buy a copy of Windows 95. Hardly anyone will install Windows 12 on purpose.