[0] https://apps.apple.com/app/id605127860

Having said that, if someone just joined before the sale and is laid off, they should get a generous layoff package similar to longer term employees since they may have just quit a job to go there and are now back on the market.

To assume otherwise is foolish and naive. That’s simply not how employment works.

The people who need the paid portion of the app are also likely enthusiasts, and in that light the pricing seems fair too.

> I’ll argue that Komoot is neither a moral failure nor an outlier but the capitalist system of value extraction working exactly as intended for the platform owners.

If it wasn't for Bending Spoons it would have been another private equity firm. It's not about them being particularly evil, it's about living in a system that makes their existence inevitable.

Since after all the only time private equity is interested in going public is unicorns.

There's a system that needs to be reformed, it's not fixable by individual attitudes.

Well, there are still costs involved (not just financial but also labour), and someone has to pay them. We are lucky to have a number of great open source and community-driven projects where people do contribute time and money to make data freely available to everyone, but it's not guaranteed. If there aren't enough people who are willing and able to contribute, or the costs get too great, the project will founder.

OpenStreetMap seems like it is already doing this to an extent, or at least is a good platform on which something like this could be built. Hopefully this saga encourages more people to contribute that way.

I am therefore thankful to the old Komoot Team and I'm sad for them.

The problem is legal suits over complex contract law are way too expensive for impacted people to legitimately seek enforcement in cases like this. Especially since courts hate non-monetary enforcement and so at best would allow some pittance of money as a replacement.

As an engineer if you are gonna be a rank and file employee you need to do it for your own reasons. I think the main good reasons to do it are:

1. It's relatively chill and you value the stability. You deliver competence from 9-5 then go home to your family or some other thing that's more important to you than work.

2. You really enjoy the pure engineering side and find meaning in the technical artifact you're creating. Probably it's open source and has some value/community outside of your employer.

3. You're gaining valuable experience that you can later leverage into something else. Probably you're in the first 5 years of your career.

If the main thing driving you is growing a business, and you don't directly own (not options or RSUs or whatever, actual real equity) a significant slice of it, you are very likely misdirecting your energy.

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It sounds like the staff here thought they were in case 2, but they were not. I think that the article explains the reason why nicely: the thing they were building was not part of the commons.

That's not unethical at all, in fact I think that's a highly intelligent strategy to look out for the little guy (namely you) in the bear pit of tech capitalism. Anyone buying into the "we're more than a company, we're family" schtick is just another sucker to be worked remorselessly to line the pockets of the VPs and C-suite.

My previous employers included me in their Director/VP meetings, and the family schtick evaporates pretty quickly when they start talking cuts. One VP in a meeting, quite literally, proposed laying off an entire team of veteran engineers (most with young kids) and the very next thing that came out of this doucebag's mouth was "are we ordering in some lunch?". They do not care a whit about you and once you realise that then you should just look to yourself first and foremost and forget accepting below-average salaries just for some "mission".

They will happily kick you to the curb for any of the following reasons, which I have personally witnessed in the past few years,

- Their pal is looking for a job that's currently occupied by someone else. So they fire and hire.

- They want to deflect blame for their own failures, so they fire a bunch of folks who had nothing to do with the failures.

- They want to appear 'ruthless' to the CEO, so fire people to enhance their own image.

- They do a clear out of their previous incumbents staff once they replace someone and bring in their own crew.

Unless you already have large interested parties "bribing" (not technically of course) the group of controlling members tends to be a weakness of anything crowd sourced.

Especially since it is rarely cut and dry. If the finances aren't working out is it better to sell and keep the site online or not? Are intrusive pop ups begging for donations a better option? There isn't a singular true best option.

IMO non-profit or charitable status is a must for sustainable, open, community-driven projects. One of the dumbest takes I often hear is "this for-profit corporation was good and kind before financial capitalism came along". Financial capitalism was always there, the for-profit corporation is pretty much a pure product of financial capitalism. Don't believe any for-profit startup that tells you it is all about the social mission, it is not. Even if the company is European.