I wrote about this in the context of OpenStreetMap a couple of years ago (https://blog.systemed.net/post/18), but with rather different reasoning:

> We didn’t realise it at the time, but OpenStreetMap came from a unique moment in internet history.

> It was still the time of the Old Internet. The time when you, or anyone, could upload a few pages to your own “webspace” or “homepage”, writing about what took your fancy. You didn’t have to worry about Facebook and Google as gatekeepers, or HTTPS, or your server being compromised within five minutes of turning on, or GDPR, or front-end frameworks, or any of the curses of the modern web.

> 2004 was when the homegrown web met the participatory web, before it all got turned to shit by Facebook and Google. You wouldn’t start OSM in 2024: the nascent project would be squashed by Google, or founder under Reddit/HN users’ expectations of “why not good yet”, or flame out in some controversy over privacy or disputed borders. But we got through all of that in our early years, when the world was simpler.