[dayglored]

> You are conveniently overlooking the McDonald’s option, which is to continue as we have done but get a check in the mail for selling the platform. Nothing changes except that someone else carries the big ball and gets the big bux if it works.

Honest, I'm not overlooking it. There are three basic options for someone who's going to invest time and effort in fielding a website. You can:

1. License or buy website software that already has all of what you want, and is scalable, and sink money into the scaling.
2. Hire some software developers and write your own.
3. License or buy website software that needs a near-total makeover in order to support large scale and additional features not in the original. Sink money and time into development, and then sink money into scaling.

Here's the rub. Option#1 isn't available, because FR software as-is is not scalable at that level, and is not a "modern social network" site. It's a trim, compact political forum. Option#2 costs money and time up front, but you own it outright. You're arguing for Option#3, which costs at least as much as #2, and is more trouble because you're dealing with old code someone else is responsible for.

Anyone who is going to carry the big ball is going to want to make money. That's either advertising, or selling user's information; it sure ain't gonna happen on donations (see: FReepathon). So it stops being like FR from the git-go.

I believe that a potential licensee would look at FR software and see that they have lots of work to do, to make it scalable to a large level, and featureful and monetizable so that it competes with the other modern-looking sites, and they'll say, if we have to do all that work, why license something that needs work (#3), we'll just write our own (#2).

I'm not overlooking your argument. I'm saying the McDonalds analogy doesn't hold. FR's software isn't hamburgers. I believe that licensing FR software just doesn't make business sense for the licensee.

But that's just my opinion. See if you can get JimRob to license JohnRob's software to you, and take a run at it. If it makes business sense, you'll be able to make that case and get a loan or venture capital to make it happen.

Good luck. Really, no /sarc. I'm always willing to be proven wrong.

[Kevmo]

I doubt I could make it work, because I’m not a software dude I’m a hardware dude.

But Trump could make it work. Why not accept his money and nod at him when he winks at us in the future?

The key to making it work isn’t to add more features to the software hamburger. It is to keep features to a minimum and retain that lightning fast loadup speed that FR retains.