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The two aren't mutually exclusive. It is a common monetization strategy for open source projects to offer a paid hosted option in addition to free self-hosting. For example, you can self-host Matrix (synapse, dendrite, and conduit) but you can also pay the creators of Matrix to host it for you[1].

[1] https://element.io/pricing

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Yeah, that's fair - Discourse is a different forum software that follows this playbook.

The lack of a unified backend makes it much harder to build native mobile apps.

> The lack of a unified backend makes it much harder to build native mobile apps.

That response comes across as disingenuous. The lack of a unified backend makes a lot of monetisation models hard, but should pose zero problems for native mobile apps. Point at an API and done.

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