this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2026
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[META] Are paid for, closed source projects, being advertised on this community, appropriate? (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by breadsmasher@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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A number of brand new accounts have popped up shilling their paid for applications.

Is this within the rules? Is the community happy with this? Could mods clarify this in the rules?

Either allowing advertising, or banning it entirely.

my point is - there is a difference between an open source homegrown project that might be useful, vs closed source paid for projects from brand new accounts

some replies are misunderstanding, somehow.

I am against

brand new accounts who:

  1. first post is a brand new project
  2. project is closed source
  3. project will cost money
  4. is asking for free testing
  5. the post is literally an advertisement
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[–] SuspiciousCarrot78@aussie.zone 18 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Partial agreement. My personal stance - it's a bit like porn. Hard to define but I know it when I see it.

  1. first post (ever, anywhere on Lemmy) is an adverting pitch for their brand new project - FAIL
  2. zero effort LLM generated blurb, with no human steering - FAIL
  3. the post is literally an advertisement and adds nothing else - FAIL
  4. the poster does a post and run - FAIL
  5. the post is bot-shaped - FAIL
  6. poster does not / cannot engage with community - FAIL

The whole thing about paid vs free etc...of course, I prefer FOSS and AGPL, but I don't begrudge anyone trying to recoup costs or keep their source code to themselves. Someone else's software licence shouldn't be a purity test IMESHO

As for the whole AI / non-AI thing...too much of that comes off as performative. I think we can all spot slop, just like we can all spot email spam. In 2026, I assume you used AI to help...and you can assume (if I am interested in your project) I will use AI to spelunk your code base (initially) for borks, then dive particulars.