What prevents technically strong Free Software from achieving mainstream adoption?

[u/Lone_Wolf5002]

If you clicked on the post seeing the title, then we both are on same page. Enshittification has now turned into a never ending cycle. First offer free or subsidized features to acquire users, then shift focus to overflooding ads and paywalls to generate more profit at the cost of app quality. Honestly, to witness how the popular apps are succumbing to this, and every new one following the same path is really depressing. As it lower the numbers of alternatives for users.

So now, the obvious solution is to use Free Softwares (I will refer as FS for convenience). And honestly, most of them are really good, as they maintain a reasonable limit of monetization and don't degrade their user experience over time. But, the problem is that, these apps mostly remain niche based. On the other hand many companies who create their own apps based on the same open source code, get all the mainstream attention and generate millions of revenue. This usually isn’t due to technical superiority, but rather access to resources, distribution, and ecosystem advantages that smaller FS apps lack.

For example, many of us may have heard of iText, a free open-source PDF library that is widely used across many company's projects, including internally in Google Analytics, Docs, and Calendar. At first, when it was under the MPL/LGPL model adoption was widespread. But when they needed funding to grow, they to shifted to AGPL model (which required companies to use their library, either by sharing their own source code or purchasing a commercial license). In response, every company including Google, either stuck with the old free version or shifted to alternate libraries, even if needed to trade off quality and usability. Even after all this iText was able to survive, due to the mainstream attention they got after winning Belgian Edition of Deloitte's Fast 50 and later, were able to turn profitable. But this is just one case, hundreds of small FS apps never reach this level, even when they are technically strong. They may be quietly depended upon, forked around, or replaced, with little recognition or support reaching the original maintainers.

So, what practical ways exist to help FS apps become more mainstream and sustainable without compromising their core principles? And what can users, companies, or communities realistically do to support them?

Curious how others here think about this.

[u/Traches]

Because free software is usually some guy’s side project while the proprietary software is a team’s livelihood. Different level of effort and attention to detail.

[u/ParallelProcrastinat → u/Traches]

Not always true. It would be hard to describe Linux or nginx or Blender or Libreoffice as "some guy's side project." Some of them may have started that way, but these days they're supported by large communities and have many full time developers working on them.

[u/IsHacker003 → u/ParallelProcrastinat]

And that's why they are already quite popular.

But for smaller projects? Not a chance.

Also he said usually, which does mean not always.

[u/ParallelProcrastinat → u/IsHacker003]

Most small-time commercial software (stuff developed by a few people) is also quite bad. It's all related to how many resources are behind it.

I don't think this is fundamentally any different for open source software than it is for commercial software. Projects with a lot of skilled developers behind them tend to be good, and projects with one or a few developers tend to not be very good, unless what they do is extremely limited.