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They only had 150 active users (despite 1000 signups), so choosing not to pay for the offering makes sense. I have the utmost respect for CERN as an institutio

They only had 150 active users (despite 1000 signups), so choosing not to pay for the offering makes sense. I have the utmost respect for CERN as an institution — I want to make that clear. What I don’t love, however, is this trend that seems to be using a PR offensive of “price shaming” whenever contract or license terms change. I understand CERN is publicly funded and that it doesn’t have an unlimited budget. But I’m not sure how necessary the passive-aggressive jab at the three-year free trial now becoming paid is to the fact that CERN is dropping a tool only 150 people actively used. The critiques of the product (and I’ve never used Workplace and hope I never have to) seen to be totally inconsequential, because CERN seemed to be happy doing the IT work to keep it running/integrated as long as it was free. It’s fine to drop support for a communication tool — especially one that doesn’t have a lot of adoption. But there seems to be an insinuation that Facebook should continue to give CERN access for free, and that I just don’t like.

twic 7y ago
It's absolutely fine to passive-aggressively shame a 500 billion dollar public corporation. There just isn't anything wrong with doing that.
arethuza 7y ago
Given what was invented at CERN you think Facebook would have the decency to give them a free license!
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  That's basically stating that influencers should get free stuff; CERN is a company that handles hundreds of millions, and I don't believe they're too poor to pay for services.
  - lexs 7y ago
    It's kind of weird to describe CERN as "a company", doesn't quite capture the spirit of it...
  - andrepd 7y ago
    Except that CERN is not a company, nor is it swimming in money.
  - JorgeGT 7y ago
    Services that are possible because that "company" chose to put the WWW in the public domain: https://cds.cern.ch/record/1164399# https://cds.cern.ch/record/1164399# Can you imagine, if CERN had patented HTML, HTTP, the Web server and the Web browser?
    - pushpop 7y ago
      Without wanting to sound dismissive to the massive contribution Tim Berners-Lee, and CERN as a whole, has made to IT; we’d probably have ended up with the same user experience we have today but with Gopher as the base tech. Or maybe something else entirely different from markup perspective, such as something RTF or s-expressions...? Great technological advancements are rarely the work of one genius in isolation. Usually it requires the imagination of a great many people to be captured. By which point the world is already ready for such an invention so it becomes more of an evolutionary breakthrough rather than a one idea that couldn’t be recreated.
      - JorgeGT 7y ago
        I agree, but if you patent certain processes, concepts, etc. early on, you can get filthy rich as everyone has to license your technology.
        pushpop 7y ago
        In theory, yes. But there are a few caveats to that: 1. CERN wouldn’t have been able to patent anything too generalised because there was prior art (Gopher) 2. Thus if the patent was too expensive developers would have just used a similar technology (bare in mind it took quite a few years before the web to evolve from a toy, then something that companies “needed” but it wasn’t contributing massively to their bottom line, to what it is today where a great many businesses sole market is web based). 3. Even if it had somehow became part of industry standard or CERN had achieved a vague patent that prevented similar implementations from coexisting, Europe has this thing called (if I remember the acronym correctly) FRAND patents where patents which are required as part of a standard have to be fairly licensed. None of this means CERN couldn’t have potentially made a lot from HTML & HTTP. But I also think part of the reason it was the success it was, was because it was a royalty free open specification.
  - bipson 7y ago
    Utter nonsense - CERN is neither a company, nor has it millions to give out. Do you have any idea how multi-national government-funded research institutions work?
- gonzo41 7y ago
  Corporate social media is like having your parents try and hang our an be cool with you. It just won't ever work they way they think! I used an earlier version of this stuff at a bank, an it was very monitored. The way we were instructed to write, like and shares things made me feel even more oppressed by an already pretty stuffy job.
- jld89 7y ago
  Exactly. That would be great publicity for Facebook, it's a win-win situation.
deugtniet 7y ago
I read this as an announcement of the 'why' they dropped it for their own 150 active users. There's nothing wrong with saying you stop something because it has become too expensive. It's not price shaming, it's saying that you're not willing to pay the price that has increased. It would've been price shaming if it said that it was so much money for so little services.
- mkolodny 7y ago
  There's nothing wrong with dropping an internal tool because you don't want to pay for it. Posting about it publicly is a different story. I'm not seeing why they would post about it publicly unless they wanted to put public pressure on Facebook to let them keep using it for free. To me, that's price shaming.
  - hoseja 7y ago
    Glance at the site: https://home.cern/news https://home.cern/news (for example: https://home.cern/news/official-news/cern/staff-rules-and-regulations-11th-edition-modification-no15 https://home.cern/news/official-news/cern/staff-rules-and-re... ) It's basically an internal memo, except CERN posts them publicly.
    - deugtniet 7y ago
      Which is very normal state of affairs for research organizations. They try to reach as much of their employees / stakeholders as possible. You'd be surprised how often the work issued email address is not read.
      - ethbro 7y ago
        > You'd be surprised how often the work issued email address is not read. I would not. Yes, I'm talking about you, IT security architects...
    - mkolodny 7y ago
      Ah that's a different story. The posts do look more like internal memos. I doubt they're trying to shame Facebook for charging CERN for Workplace. I do wonder what the person who posted this to HN's intentions were, though.
keanzu 7y ago
> They only had 150 active users "roughly 150 active users of the platform per week." This is a distinction with a difference, "per week", casts the active user count in a different light. > passive-aggressive jab at the three-year free trial That's exactly how I read this.
sgift 7y ago
> But I’m not sure how necessary the passive-aggressive jab at the three-year free trial now becoming paid is to the fact that CERN is dropping a tool only 150 people actively used. I don't see any passive-aggressive jab in that post. It states the facts - namely that Facebook changes the conditions of their offering and the offering is no longer something worthwhile for CERN - and depending on your position this facts may look bad for Facebook. That's Facebooks problem, not CERNs.
grive 7y ago
I'm guessing you found the passive-agressive one here: > Losing control of our data was unacceptable, as was paying for a tool that was not part of our core offering for the CERN community; therefore, we will end the trial of this platform. I don't see it. The statement seems matter of fact and not relaying any opinion on the matter of Facebook choosing to end the free trial. Were you referring to another part?
syshum 7y ago
Personally I love it Centralization of the web is a huge problem, More and more we see companies paying 3rd party services (like Facebook, MS, and Google) to run communications infrastructure instead of running your own infrastructure based on Open Source software. I find that to be a TERRIBLE trend. If price shamming is a way to open peoples eyes to go back to running their own serivces then I am all for it
Spooky23 7y ago
Shaming seems a little harsh. CERN is very public about its procurements and does cross marketing agreements with many vendors. That’s well known and Facebook probably sought out CERN as a customer for this reason. When those sorts of things are done, the end of the agreement is often publicized as well, as there’s an implied endorsement.
monadic2 7y ago
You can’t shame a company.
- stronglikedan 7y ago
  Tell that to Kaepernick and Nike.
  - monadic2 7y ago
    Oh did Kaepernick manage to shame Nike? I think I missed that.
tflinton 7y ago
I wouldn’t look negatively at price shaming. Facebook isn’t a person their a corporation. I’m sure they’re delighted about this article, for one it’s free publicity and two they’re getting valuable feedback on their product. There’s a real value in blunt feedback, even if it occasionally hurts.
jgalt212 7y ago
> CERN is publicly funded and that it doesn’t have an unlimited budget Not strictly true. With a budget of €7.5 billion (approx. $9bn or £6.19bn as of June 2010), the LHC is one of the most expensive scientific instruments[1] ever built. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider#Cost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider#Cost That being said, it does seem publicly funded institutions do seem to have a lot more money to devote to plant and equipment (or anything you can put someone's name on) than software, services, or other small equipment that you cannot put someone's name on.
9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago
The so-called price shaming is what keeps prices in check for the customers in general.
gumby 7y ago
> What I don’t love, however, is this trend that seems to be using a PR offensive of “price shaming” whenever contract or license terms change. I didn't read it this way at all. I read it as "CERN was offered, and adopted, a free product with features A, B, and C. Later we were told that terms were changing and we could not longer get all of A, B, and C for free and in addition the free tier would include factors that were the cause of concern to some parties, as already described above." In other words, "no longer meets our needs so we will change." As it happened one of those "needs" wasn't really that well satisfied (only 150 people used it) but they didn't say that here so weren't shaming the product at all. In general I consider it uncool when license changes don't grandparent in existing users as much as possible.
mattlutze 7y ago
> Losing control of our data was unacceptable, as was paying for a tool that was not part of our core offering for the CERN community; therefore, we will end the trial of this platform. It seems that they were pretty open about the reasons they dropped Workplace and suggested Mattermost and Discourse as replacements.
JohnFen 7y ago
> But there seems to be an insinuation that Facebook should continue to give CERN access for free I didn't interpret the announcement as insinuating any such thing. It looked like a fairly comprehensive summary of a cost/benefit analysis to me.
Barrin92 7y ago
price shaming is just communicating information about a product you have used to other market participants. Even if you very aggressively price-shame that's just a signal that you were an unsatisfied customer, which is valuable input for everyone else. Feedback of whatever kind is how markets function so I don't think it makes sense to criticize it as long as it is their genuine opinion.

twic 7y ago

It's absolutely fine to passive-aggressively shame a 500 billion dollar public corporation. There just isn't anything wrong with doing that.

arethuza 7y ago

Given what was invented at CERN you think Facebook would have the decency to give them a free license!

Cthulhu_ 7y ago
That's basically stating that influencers should get free stuff; CERN is a company that handles hundreds of millions, and I don't believe they're too poor to pay for services.
- lexs 7y ago
  It's kind of weird to describe CERN as "a company", doesn't quite capture the spirit of it...
- andrepd 7y ago
  Except that CERN is not a company, nor is it swimming in money.
- JorgeGT 7y ago
  Services that are possible because that "company" chose to put the WWW in the public domain: https://cds.cern.ch/record/1164399# https://cds.cern.ch/record/1164399# Can you imagine, if CERN had patented HTML, HTTP, the Web server and the Web browser?
  - pushpop 7y ago
    Without wanting to sound dismissive to the massive contribution Tim Berners-Lee, and CERN as a whole, has made to IT; we’d probably have ended up with the same user experience we have today but with Gopher as the base tech. Or maybe something else entirely different from markup perspective, such as something RTF or s-expressions...? Great technological advancements are rarely the work of one genius in isolation. Usually it requires the imagination of a great many people to be captured. By which point the world is already ready for such an invention so it becomes more of an evolutionary breakthrough rather than a one idea that couldn’t be recreated.
    - JorgeGT 7y ago
      I agree, but if you patent certain processes, concepts, etc. early on, you can get filthy rich as everyone has to license your technology.
      - pushpop 7y ago
        In theory, yes. But there are a few caveats to that: 1. CERN wouldn’t have been able to patent anything too generalised because there was prior art (Gopher) 2. Thus if the patent was too expensive developers would have just used a similar technology (bare in mind it took quite a few years before the web to evolve from a toy, then something that companies “needed” but it wasn’t contributing massively to their bottom line, to what it is today where a great many businesses sole market is web based). 3. Even if it had somehow became part of industry standard or CERN had achieved a vague patent that prevented similar implementations from coexisting, Europe has this thing called (if I remember the acronym correctly) FRAND patents where patents which are required as part of a standard have to be fairly licensed. None of this means CERN couldn’t have potentially made a lot from HTML & HTTP. But I also think part of the reason it was the success it was, was because it was a royalty free open specification.
- bipson 7y ago
  Utter nonsense - CERN is neither a company, nor has it millions to give out. Do you have any idea how multi-national government-funded research institutions work?
gonzo41 7y ago
Corporate social media is like having your parents try and hang our an be cool with you. It just won't ever work they way they think! I used an earlier version of this stuff at a bank, an it was very monitored. The way we were instructed to write, like and shares things made me feel even more oppressed by an already pretty stuffy job.
jld89 7y ago
Exactly. That would be great publicity for Facebook, it's a win-win situation.

deugtniet 7y ago

I read this as an announcement of the 'why' they dropped it for their own 150 active users. There's nothing wrong with saying you stop something because it has become too expensive. It's not price shaming, it's saying that you're not willing to pay the price that has increased. It would've been price shaming if it said that it was so much money for so little services.

mkolodny 7y ago
There's nothing wrong with dropping an internal tool because you don't want to pay for it. Posting about it publicly is a different story. I'm not seeing why they would post about it publicly unless they wanted to put public pressure on Facebook to let them keep using it for free. To me, that's price shaming.
- hoseja 7y ago
  Glance at the site: https://home.cern/news https://home.cern/news (for example: https://home.cern/news/official-news/cern/staff-rules-and-regulations-11th-edition-modification-no15 https://home.cern/news/official-news/cern/staff-rules-and-re... ) It's basically an internal memo, except CERN posts them publicly.
  - deugtniet 7y ago
    Which is very normal state of affairs for research organizations. They try to reach as much of their employees / stakeholders as possible. You'd be surprised how often the work issued email address is not read.
    - ethbro 7y ago
      > You'd be surprised how often the work issued email address is not read. I would not. Yes, I'm talking about you, IT security architects...
  - mkolodny 7y ago
    Ah that's a different story. The posts do look more like internal memos. I doubt they're trying to shame Facebook for charging CERN for Workplace. I do wonder what the person who posted this to HN's intentions were, though.

keanzu 7y ago

> They only had 150 active users "roughly 150 active users of the platform per week." This is a distinction with a difference, "per week", casts the active user count in a different light. > passive-aggressive jab at the three-year free trial That's exactly how I read this.

sgift 7y ago

> But I’m not sure how necessary the passive-aggressive jab at the three-year free trial now becoming paid is to the fact that CERN is dropping a tool only 150 people actively used. I don't see any passive-aggressive jab in that post. It states the facts - namely that Facebook changes the conditions of their offering and the offering is no longer something worthwhile for CERN - and depending on your position this facts may look bad for Facebook. That's Facebooks problem, not CERNs.

grive 7y ago

I'm guessing you found the passive-agressive one here: > Losing control of our data was unacceptable, as was paying for a tool that was not part of our core offering for the CERN community; therefore, we will end the trial of this platform. I don't see it. The statement seems matter of fact and not relaying any opinion on the matter of Facebook choosing to end the free trial. Were you referring to another part?

syshum 7y ago

Personally I love it Centralization of the web is a huge problem, More and more we see companies paying 3rd party services (like Facebook, MS, and Google) to run communications infrastructure instead of running your own infrastructure based on Open Source software. I find that to be a TERRIBLE trend. If price shamming is a way to open peoples eyes to go back to running their own serivces then I am all for it

Spooky23 7y ago

Shaming seems a little harsh. CERN is very public about its procurements and does cross marketing agreements with many vendors. That’s well known and Facebook probably sought out CERN as a customer for this reason. When those sorts of things are done, the end of the agreement is often publicized as well, as there’s an implied endorsement.

monadic2 7y ago

You can’t shame a company.

stronglikedan 7y ago
Tell that to Kaepernick and Nike.
- monadic2 7y ago
  Oh did Kaepernick manage to shame Nike? I think I missed that.

tflinton 7y ago

I wouldn’t look negatively at price shaming. Facebook isn’t a person their a corporation. I’m sure they’re delighted about this article, for one it’s free publicity and two they’re getting valuable feedback on their product. There’s a real value in blunt feedback, even if it occasionally hurts.

jgalt212 7y ago

> CERN is publicly funded and that it doesn’t have an unlimited budget Not strictly true. With a budget of €7.5 billion (approx. $9bn or £6.19bn as of June 2010), the LHC is one of the most expensive scientific instruments[1] ever built. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider#Cost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider#Cost That being said, it does seem publicly funded institutions do seem to have a lot more money to devote to plant and equipment (or anything you can put someone's name on) than software, services, or other small equipment that you cannot put someone's name on.

9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago

The so-called price shaming is what keeps prices in check for the customers in general.

gumby 7y ago

> What I don’t love, however, is this trend that seems to be using a PR offensive of “price shaming” whenever contract or license terms change. I didn't read it this way at all. I read it as "CERN was offered, and adopted, a free product with features A, B, and C. Later we were told that terms were changing and we could not longer get all of A, B, and C for free and in addition the free tier would include factors that were the cause of concern to some parties, as already described above." In other words, "no longer meets our needs so we will change." As it happened one of those "needs" wasn't really that well satisfied (only 150 people used it) but they didn't say that here so weren't shaming the product at all. In general I consider it uncool when license changes don't grandparent in existing users as much as possible.

mattlutze 7y ago

> Losing control of our data was unacceptable, as was paying for a tool that was not part of our core offering for the CERN community; therefore, we will end the trial of this platform. It seems that they were pretty open about the reasons they dropped Workplace and suggested Mattermost and Discourse as replacements.

JohnFen 7y ago

> But there seems to be an insinuation that Facebook should continue to give CERN access for free I didn't interpret the announcement as insinuating any such thing. It looked like a fairly comprehensive summary of a cost/benefit analysis to me.

Barrin92 7y ago

price shaming is just communicating information about a product you have used to other market participants. Even if you very aggressively price-shame that's just a signal that you were an unsatisfied customer, which is valuable input for everyone else. Feedback of whatever kind is how markets function so I don't think it makes sense to criticize it as long as it is their genuine opinion.