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monkeydust 7 hours ago

I wouldn't underestimate the community effect of software. There are plenty of features that get shipped because a small but important minority requested them, only to benefit the long tail of users who never knew to ask for such a feature but now find it indispensable. If everyone is building their own isolated solutions, how does this positive externality manifest itself?

sublinear 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Much of the business world sees that as very high risk.

In their eyes, community moderation is an inverted pendulum that eventually falls over. Either one niche and unprofitable direction dominates, or the community turns it into an incoherent junk drawer of features. You're also opening yourself up to competitors poisoning the whole thing. To investors, it signals a lack of vision.

Feedback isn't inherently good or bad, but it can be unnecessary risk if you already know you have a solid product that meets the most common use cases with the strongest demand.

This is why successful products tend to be very mediocre. They're the average of all insights considered. Doing anything else is leaving money on the table.

To answer your question, nobody wants their product to become the platform that launches your directly competing product. That's suicide. You're asking to ride someone else's coattails.

skybrian 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Perhaps as open source software, but it would require building a community that agrees on some common procedures about what to build and how to use AI.