Permacomputing Business Models

Because Lichen-Markdown has fewer features, and focuses on simplicity, the codebase can also be smaller and simpler too. In some sense Permacomputing, and Lichen-Markdown, is an experiment in valuing simplicity instead of denigrating it, and a range of intersecting values, aesthetics and affordances that come along with this.

Having a small codebase also relates to certain questions about financial sustainability and maintenance that relate to a lot of questions in open source. Additionally, to what degree are corporate software ecosystems and free software ecosystems separate, given how funding flows from corporations to open source, either directly, or by giving software developers financial freedom to work on free projects?

Complicated software takes more time and energy (and thus usually money) to build and to maintain — crypto projects often try to come up with alternative business models for sustaining software, but they keep the complexity and even add to it. Part of my interest in permacomputing is to ask if we make simpler tools, can we also potentially maintain them more easily and in different ways. This may not be the case for all contexts, but there might be contexts where it is true.

Here are some references related to these topics of alternative software business models: