Beyond User Counts: How Free Software Thrives Through Social Utility

In a tech landscape dominated by metrics and growth targets, a counterintuitive philosophy is gaining traction among experienced free software maintainers: the most successful projects aren't those that aggressively pursue user acquisition, but those that cultivate genuine social utility within their communities.

This perspective challenges conventional wisdom that equates project success with raw user numbers or market dominance. Instead, it suggests that organic, sustainable growth emerges naturally when software provides tangible value to its core user base.

The Growth Paradox

A common complaint in free software circles revolves around projects allegedly "not doing enough" to grow their userbase. These criticisms often take the form of:

"[PROJECT] developers have explicitly said they do not want the project to grow. The [PROJECT] is its own worst enemy, and this is just the latest example of it I've seen. I don't trust the direction of [PROJECT], and neither should you."

Such arguments reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of how successful free software ecosystems develop. They prioritize short-term metrics over long-term sustainability, often pressuring maintainers to make decisions that could harm the project's core value proposition.

Social Utility as Growth Engine

The experienced maintainer understands that they must play the long game, not the short game. Tactics such as "embrace, extend, extinguish" are largely only effective when maintainers are looking at the short-term picture.

Organic growth in the use of a free software package is a function of that package's social utility: a software package which provides utility to its community will experience growth in adoption because its users will recommend that software to others and join the project's community.

This creates a virtuous cycle where genuine value leads to organic expansion, rather than the forced growth that can come from marketing campaigns or feature bloat designed to attract new users.

Beyond Mass-Market Appeal

The social utility of a given software package is not necessarily tied to mass-market adoption. It is possible for a software package to be extremely popular in a tight-knit community while holding very little social utility for the mass market—and this is totally fine.

In fact, this is the case for most software packages that exist in the world. Specialized tools, domain-specific solutions, and infrastructure components rarely achieve widespread recognition yet provide immense value to their respective communities.

The danger arises when projects pursue new feature development as a gamble on obtaining mass-market adoption, potentially destroying the social utility of the product for its current userbase. An experienced maintainer will recognize that such gambles rarely pay off and usually wind up damaging the project rather than growing it.

Resisting Growth Pressure

Unfortunately, society teaches us that we should grow at any cost, which means that inexperienced maintainers can be swayed by arguments for aggressive expansion to make harmful decisions to their projects.

The pressure to grow can manifest in several ways:

• Adding features that appeal to hypothetical future users rather than addressing current community needs
• Overcomplicating APIs to attract enterprise adoption
• Sacrificing stability for the sake of frequent releases
• Neglecting documentation and community support in favor of new functionality

These decisions often undermine the very social utility that made the project valuable in the first place, creating a self-defeating cycle.

The Maintainer's Perspective

For maintainers, recognizing that growth arguments are inherently defective can help avoid taking them seriously. The focus should remain on:

1. Solving real problems for existing users
2. Maintaining code quality and stability
3. Building inclusive, supportive communities
4. Prioritizing long-term sustainability over short-term metrics

This approach doesn't preclude growth—it simply allows it to emerge naturally from the project's increasing value rather than being forced through strategic decisions that may compromise the project's integrity.

The Evolution of Value

In an industry obsessed with metrics and exponential growth, the philosophy of social utility offers a refreshing alternative. It suggests that the most successful free software projects aren't those that chase users, but those that cultivate communities around genuine problem-solving.

For developers and maintainers, this perspective provides a framework for making decisions that prioritize long-term value over short-term gains. It reminds us that in the world of free software, quality trumps quantity, and community strength is a more reliable indicator of success than user counts.

As the free software ecosystem continues to evolve, this philosophy may prove increasingly valuable in maintaining the integrity and sustainability of the projects that form its foundation.

Source: https://ariadne.space/2022/08/05/free-software-grows-as-a.html