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Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Umm… not sure you are aware that non-profits still pay their employees. Non-profit is a pretty common way of running a business. All it means is there is no incentive to make more money than is necessary for the companies needs. Any extra income is just re-invested in the company or donated to charity if un-needed.

Basically just means there’s no need to look for more ways to squeeze money out of the customers if they are already happy. And prioritizing usefulness rather than bloating the software is incentivised.

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rglullis@communick.news ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Non-profit is a pretty common way of running a business.

By definition, a business can not be a non-profit.

All it means is there is no incentive to make more money than is necessary for the companies needs.

Having individuals and companies being able to sustain or to invest resources because they expect to have profits is a good thing. The profit motive is a net-positive force for wealth creation:

Linux only became the dominant operating system on the server when companies like IBM decided to pour billions of dollars into it? Were they doing it out of kindness? No, they were doing it because it was part of their strategy to commoditize the OS so they could profit more by selling beefy servers and specialized consulting.

Mozilla can not survive without Google’s money, and even with it is dying a slow death. Would you rather have this zombie Mozilla “Foundation” or do you think we would be better off if they Mozilla could find a profitable service or product to let them grow independently from Google?

Mastodon’s has two full-time developers. Gargron, the founder of the project, is reportedly making 30k€/year. This is the kind of salary that if a recent grad would laugh at if it was offered in Germany. Facebook put 100 people to work on their project Barcelona (Threads). Do you really think that Mastodon is getting all the resources that it “needs”? Wouldn’t it be better if Mastodon GmbH could make more money to develop things faster and to serve people better?

Pixelfed and Lemmy were funded mostly by NLNet grants, but do you really think that those resources are enough to compete with Instagram or reddit? Wouldn’t it be better if Pixelfed had more than one talented-but-ADHD-riddled developer? Wouldn’t it be good for society if, e.g, my for-profit operation was profitable enough so that my pledge of giving 20% of profits to these projects was meaningful?
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