While I agree that it is annoying whenever one reads something put out by the actual SO people, I notice that (thus far) if I simply ignore that and go there to look up the answers to questions (and very occasionally ask or answer them), it still works fine. As long as the new owner doesn't make it "pay to see", I can probably ignore them.
There is, of course, no guarantee in this. But, while I find what I hear about Mozilla's internal politics obnoxious, I am also able to just use Firefox and ignore all that, thus far.
Plenty of examples of a purchase being the beginning of the end, but it's not inevitable. Microsoft owns Github. Google owns Youtube. So far, both are still functional, if compared to other real-world products rather than some theoretical ideal. Now, you could put hundreds of counterexamples on the other side of that, but at least it is possible for the buyer not to completely screw things up.
I will admit the Prosus people seem more forward-looking (based on some wiki reading) than your usual run-of-the-mill PE acquirer. So perhaps they can steer the ship competently.
Was github worse, prior to the microsoft purchase? It's still relatively recent and only a small chapter in the history of the company. I'm not sure you can say at this stage that it's better than if Github had remained independent.
> As long as the new owner doesn't make it "pay to see", I can probably ignore them.
There was a very similar site about a decade ago, that would absolutely dominate in the Google search results - but of course, the answers were behind a paywall. Today, I don't even remember what their domain was called.
The parallel is more striking than your post suggests.
Experts Exchange had no paywall for years. Endless people built the site up, provided help, then suddenly?
All their posts, content, and more were one day monetized, and locked away. Same thing happened with IMDB too, at the start. It was all, all of it, user contributed.
Then one day, they locked it all up. Of course, IMDB has grown a lot since then, and allows you to download the database if you wish regardless...
But point is, this sort of thing happens all the time...
There is, of course, no guarantee in this. But, while I find what I hear about Mozilla's internal politics obnoxious, I am also able to just use Firefox and ignore all that, thus far.
Plenty of examples of a purchase being the beginning of the end, but it's not inevitable. Microsoft owns Github. Google owns Youtube. So far, both are still functional, if compared to other real-world products rather than some theoretical ideal. Now, you could put hundreds of counterexamples on the other side of that, but at least it is possible for the buyer not to completely screw things up.