On: Ask HN: Why is everything changing too fast?

[goodpoint]

#4) Attention is the new money.

For a lot of software, like social networks, getting new users and new downloads is the main goal.

When a company is not charging [most] users money, the second best thing is publicity or grabbing and selling user's data. Both options require user churn. Keeping users happy for a long time is not their concern.

Unfortunately this is happening in the FOSS world as well. Constant churn of software products, features and bugfixes to keep users addicted.

[burntoutfire → goodpoint]

> Unfortunately this is happening in the FOSS world as well. Constant churn of software products, features and bugfixes to keep users addicted.

I suspect there's so much churn in FOSS, because developers love rewrites and starting from scratch. In the world of commercial software, written by companies, the bosses/owners reign them in. FOSS, on the other hand, does not have bosses or owners...

[goodpoint → burntoutfire]

No, most churn comes from company-driven FOSS, especially around devops stuff.

Among other reasons, they use churn as a way to control the userbase and prevent successful fork.

> FOSS, on the other hand, does not have bosses or owners...

Corporate-driven OSS has plenty.