Careful license choice and intentionally crippling things such that they are objectively useless unless you meet the exact needs that I have.
I've kind of given up on elemental-ircd and left it unmaintained and archived, but I would probably send a job application in to that place if said unicorn startup happened. A few people have tried to take over elemental in the past, but as a whole the IRC ecosystem is on a downturn so they don't last long. It's a complicated situation though. At some level I'd be shocked that they managed to turn that pile of shit into something usable!
Are you familiar with Kant's categorical imperative? (https://open.library.okstate.edu/introphilosophy/chapter/the...)
I am now. I'll need to digest it for a while.
How do you ensure that's not the case? Careful license choice, "you're on your own" wording or something else?
Like, if someone created a unicorn startup rivaling Slack using Elemental-IRCd, how would you react?
(I have massive respect for anyone maintaining an ircd, btw, having attempted to contribute to one a long time ago)