5 ms·
Malice is a loaded term. When Amazon tells you they want to buy you, never sign and come out with a competing product months later we feel malice. But in this
by wolco 7y ago
Malice is a loaded term.
When Amazon tells you they want to buy you, never sign and come out with a competing product months later we feel malice.
But in this case we don't becauce Microsoft copied an existing product and open source it we say no malice exists.
Big companies are copying smaller successful products on mass. It is not illegal, it's not out of malice. But its getting tiresome. How many products can facebook buy or copy and crush before we change the rules. Avoiding this was one of the pillars of copyright long ago. Now we have copyright for and copying trade secret powered development for big players.
- CrazyStat 7y agoHow would you suggest changing the rules?
- paulryanrogers 7y agoMaybe companies with an overwhelming share of a market/platform are restricted from expanding into adjacent verticals.
- CrazyStat 7y agoWould that help in this case? Microsoft doesn't have an overwhelming share of the cloud services market AFAIK. Defining "adjacent verticals" also seems super tricky and open to abuse.
- tomnipotent 7y agoBut it's ok when small companies or OSS projects copy big companies? Isn't that double standards? GitLab was a perfect example when its first release(s) blatantly ripped off the GitHub interface. Edit: Removing "amusing"
- aliswe 7y agoVery good point but the use of Amusing really put me off as it's very belittling, and is representative of how I think HN commenters generally behave
- tomnipotent 7y agoThank you, you're right. Edited out.
- aliswe 7y agoGood job! I'm taking downvotes for this!
- abdullahkhalids 7y agoIt is indeed okay. Phenomena that result in the market being more competitive are good, phenomena that result in the market being oligopolistic are bad.
- tomnipotent 7y agoI don't like this argument. Can I apply it to free speech then? It's either a level playing field, or it isn't.
- catalogia 7y agoAFAIK American defamation law is in fact laxer when the target of the defamation is a public figure.
- paulryanrogers 7y agoHow level is the playing field when one party has so much money and mindshare they can displace everyone else in the market with a single, mediocre launch? Sports have salary caps and governments have anti-trust. Once companies become defacto governments it's reasonable for regulation to step in to level the field.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ptx 7y agoWhich sports with a level playing field allow one team to have a thousand times as many players in play as the other team?
- megablast 7y agoLook at soccer leagues. Some teams have many millions to spend on players, others only have a few. And the ones who do have many millions are the one at the top of the league. In the Premier League, you have Man Utd, Chelsea, Liverpool at the top, all outspending every other team.