I think the single most convincing feature that I would like in a conversation app is for there to essentially be two companies with a public benefit charter that said that they cannot have common ownership or management, yet provided the same paid service, developed a common product though open source and had an etremely easy migration between them.

Ideally migration should be easy enough that it would be easy enough to automate a mobious strip subscription where it seamlessly alternated between providers.

If that structure existed it would be nearly impossible for a single provider to enshittify. The sad fact is that no matter how many assurances (often sincerely delivered) have been made, we have all seen instances where buyouts, management changes, or just someone in control going nuts, have turned platforms sour.

Open source is great but as this thread shows, just being open source does not mean functional or maintained.

> Campfire hasn't been actively developed for ~10 years

For people looking for a simple chat that stays simple, is this a bad thing? When do we call something feature complete? If a product is free, they no longer need to manufacture new features to justify continued payments. It does look like there were updates 2 months ago. Based on the few number of open issues, and a PR closed last week, it feels like it’s being maintained, even if it’s not getting major new features.

I’m not a Campfire user, so can’t speak to the UX, but I feel like there is a market for actively maintained projects, that are considered feature completely, which aren’t searching for new features to shoehorn in. In the long-term, this need to constantly add features generally gets interpreted as enshitification by users. Avoiding falling victim to this relentless push for “more” can be seen as a feature in itself.