It's not true in many cases, from one-way streets (only need to look one way) to blind corners (even looking you might not see the car)
* It's not a meme by any definition of the word, it's an aphorism. It's a damn good rule of thumb since the only actual example you could come up with where it doesn't apply is open-source. Even then, the context of this saying is clearly concerning commercial projects so it's not even a good example.
Actually, the only example it seems to apply to so far is Facebook; maybe also some stuff Google does sometimes. Open-source is a meta-example, because if we're comparing it with Facebook and Google+, I should probably list every major open-source program that doesn't turn you into product, and compare by the numbers. Many of those project even earn their authors money (AKA not every business model for earning money on free products is based on selling users).
This meme is getting boring and should die.
It's not true in many cases, from one-way streets (only need to look one way) to blind corners (even looking you might not see the car)
* It's not a meme by any definition of the word, it's an aphorism. It's a damn good rule of thumb since the only actual example you could come up with where it doesn't apply is open-source. Even then, the context of this saying is clearly concerning commercial projects so it's not even a good example.