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I don't think it matters much what the business model is. As long as software services are provided by centralized, for-profit entities, exploitation won't stop

• fauigerzigerk 10y ago
  Why do business models not matter? Business models are expression of self-interest and self-interest always matters. Not for profit organizations have self-interest too. We just don't always know what it is. I think what we should be looking for is alignment of self-interest and where that is not possible we need good balance of power.
  • barnacs 10y ago
    In my experience, the only interest of most for-profit corporations is maximizing next quarter's profits. If they can get away with raising the prices to the extremes to achieve that, they will. If they have to offer their services for free and balance that by exploiting their users' data or attention, they will. If they have to shut down some services or even "pivot" the entire company to a completely different domain, they will do that. I don't see how any of that is aliged with the users' interest. Of course, they will also spend quite a lot on marketing, trying to make you believe the opposite. Also, in addition to the business model, the whole entity of a for profit corporation is rather transient. And when we're talking about an infrastructure for storing, relaying and accessing information, that's definitely not a good thing. I don't think google, facebook, dropbox or github will be around in a couple of decades, due to political and economical reasons. It's hard enough to keep information around the face of technological advancements (new hardware architectures, protocols, algorithms, data formats, etc), so we really don't need these additional obstacles.