I have an idea for Reddit if they want to make money: I know your site is open source, but it is not an easy setup. The mixture between forum, customizable subreddits, and almost chat-like threading is tailor made for intra-company communication. We all feel the pain of ephemeral chat and closed-recipient email to do business. Employees need a way to show off, communicate, post neat things, customize their department's subreddit, etc. But you can't keep the Reddit branding because it is unprofessional.
So...take Reddit, make it easier to install on-prem, charge for this enterprise version, and change the name and default look of this on-prem version to distance itself from the traditional Reddit. Then watch the money roll in as I and others would pay to have more than just a forum (sorry discourse).
This is like telling someone installing Sharepoint that they know NFS shares are a thing right? Or a business using Slack that they know IRC is a thing right? Who is claiming Reddit invented it? They have made it approachable...hopefully one day all these people pointing out open alternatives that technically have feature parity will recognize why there's a difference in adoption.
So...take Reddit, make it easier to install on-prem, charge for this enterprise version, and change the name and default look of this on-prem version to distance itself from the traditional Reddit. Then watch the money roll in as I and others would pay to have more than just a forum (sorry discourse).