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Gumroad's Interestingly Timed "Open-Source" Play

The creator-economy service Gumroad decided to open-source its platform at a suspiciously convenient time. (And even “open source” might be stretching it.)

Fellow traveler Evan Hildreth pointed out two specific issues: First, the platform changed its rules for when you could email end users, which was annoying but understandable, and more troublingly, the company seems to have replaced its customer support with LLMs almost entirely. Not purely open source, but it throws FOSS folks a bone by making it so that versions of the software that are more than three years old revert to the General Public License. It’s not even the central point of the piece, but the fact is, if you’re supporting Gumroad—a tool that, notably, has survived as long as it did because of a high-profile crowdfunding campaign —you’re allowing its CEO the financial freedom to work in the Department of Veterans Affairs, at the behest of DOGE, for free.

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