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Presumably Slack's customers pay for it because they get value from it. That's not "extracting rents".

• tanderson92 7y ago
  That's not yet proven, especially if IRC was a viable (open) technical stack to build on top of. Your argument also applies without modification to the following excerpt from Wikipedia: > The classic example of rent-seeking, according to Robert Shiller, is that of a feudal lord who installs a chain across a river that flows through his land and then hires a collector to charge passing boats a fee (or rent of the section of the river for a few minutes) to lower the chain. There is nothing productive about the chain or the collector. The lord has made no improvements to the river and is not adding value in any way, directly or indirectly, except for himself. All he is doing is finding a way to make money from something that used to be free
  • esoterica 7y ago
    The chain analogy doesn’t work because nothing is stopping you from using a free alternative.
  • Gys 7y ago
    Do a test. Find some Slack users. Tell each of them about IRC and then ask which (and why !) he/she prefers. Then come back here and tell us the answers.
  • sciurus 7y ago
    Slack isn't equivalent to putting a chain across an existing river. It's equivalent to dredging a canal as an alternative to the river. You might think people are foolish to pay to use the canal when they could use the river for free, but that's a different argument.
    • tanderson92 7y ago
      This is a good point.