WHEN SOFTWARE HAS INTEGRITY

Summary from the TLDR Design newsletter

Blender, OBS, and Penpot exemplify open-source software that prioritizes users over profit. Their creators refused lucrative buyout offers to maintain their tools' integrity and accessibility. Each tool emerged from necessity—Blender was crowdfunded after being acquired by a corporation, OBS' creator spent three years talking to creators about what they needed, and Kaleidos built Penpot to create a truly open-source design tool. These examples demonstrate that software inherits its creators' values, and platform decay isn't inevitable when founders possess moral ambition focused on empowering users rather than extracting maximum financial returns.