Nobody ever wants to open source Pornhub. Wide consumer interest, no physical products to worry about, lots of advertising potential - and your not competing with Amazon, Wal-Mart, Google, Apple, or Target. Sounds like a better deal to me.

Constant hassle with payment processors deciding to ban smut once you get too big, though.

> Constant hassle with payment processors deciding to ban smut once you get too big, though.

Not doing something because you might get too big is not sound reasoning.

When you get too big, that's the time to worry about it.

The payment processors will shut you down even for your first payment if it's for porn. More likely - you'll never get to a first payment anyways, they won't sign the contract.

> The payment processors will shut you down even for your first payment if it's for porn. More likely - you'll never get to a first payment anyways, they won't sign the contract.

If that was even occasionally true, the tons of paid porn sites wouldn't exist. The fact that they both exist and take popular cards tells me that that cannot possibly be true.

There are special payment processors catering to porn/etc, but the problem is that they require extremely large collateral and have other unusual requirements that are untenable to new businesses. Most probably they won't even talk to a startup (I tried, didn't get a reply). There's a reason why startups like OnlyFans used normal payment processors and tried to convince them they're not porn instead of beginning with these specialized ones.

Edit: BTW, a large portion of seemingly independent porn sites are actually run by only few companies. Especially the Xvideos corporation.

So we should pivot to building an open source payment processor for porn?

A payment processor is an entity that handles bureaucracy. It's not a piece of software you can run and forget about. It is many people working around the clock taking phone calls.

I should have been clearer and said "software to aid in running a payment processor" but I used "payment processor" as a shorthand. Just as "open-source Amazon" is shorthand for "software to aid in running an entity like Amazon."

If someone got it to be popular enough, MindGeek would buy it and you'd be back at square one.

Many have already done open source Google and MS. We have those solutions already, and they are great though not yet pervasive. We need open source market place and logistics, and that is where they should stay focused.

Maybe practice creating an open source Microsoft before quitting your day job?

Harsh, but true

literal LOL