4 ms·
This is fine. No seriously. Hear me out. If you are a proponent of capitalism then this is how the system works. The little fish grow into big fish. The big
by josho 6y ago
This is fine.
No seriously. Hear me out.
If you are a proponent of capitalism then this is how the system works.
The little fish grow into big fish. The big fish eat the little fish. The ecosystem suffers.
It has always been this way. Many of us remember Microsoft in the nineties. Fewer will remember the phone or oil industry doing the same.
Don’t fight this issue. Fight the system that tolerates this pattern. Money in politics, high cost of litigation are both the real concerns.
- adamcstephens 6y agoYour examples from the past were all knocked down (MS) or broken apart to keep the market available to competitors. Are you saying we should do this or just get money out of politics?
- josho 6y agoMSFT was broken apart. The DOJ trial only began after a decade of microsoft abusing their market position and destroying numerous companies. I'm saying large industry has undue influence over the regulators and so action only comes when companies like Elastic have gone bankrupt.
- whitepaint 6y agoThere are no better alternatives. And about the ElasticSearch, they should have just used a different license.
- josho 6y agoReflecting on this more I think capitalism is the wrong word. Completely unregulated markets is what is really the issue. It leads to the incumbents extracting all the profit and then using their monopoly position to extract rents for the next few decades.
- jrochkind1 6y agoWould ElasticSearch have gotten as popular as it has if they had used a non-opensource license from the start?
- spinningslate 6y ago> There are no better alternatives. That's a strong claim - evidence? > And about the ElasticSearch, they should have just used a different license. Hindsight and all that. Not saying I fully agree with Elastic's approach, especially the license uncertainly it creates as noted elsewhere in the thread. But Amazon seems to have gone beyond "hey, this open source, nothing to stop us offering it" here. From The CTO's suggestion Elastic was a partner, to questionable trademark infringement, to potential copying of closed source code. If you read the article, it's notable that Elasticsearch continue to have working relationships with Azure and Google among others. So there's more to this than just "should've used a different license".
- indymike 6y agoCapitalism is simply an economic system defined by private ownership of the means of production. I'm not sure you are using capitalism correctly here.
- josho 6y agoYou are right. I think it's that we allow companies to become dominant in their industry and abuse their market position. I incorrectly called out capitalism when it's really unregulated markets combined with a legal system that makes it possible for large companies to avoid consequences, or at least defer consequences until they've wiped out their competition that the consequence is merely a minor fine.
- InfiniteRand 6y agoMeh, I'm not convinced that other systems will be fundamentally better Humans are flawed, the systems they build will be flawed, flaws will wax and wane with circumstances, possibly waxing to the point of intolerability and then they break and are replaced with something else. Paradise remains fundamentally always out of reach. And yet there are good moments, good relationships, little pieces of life that are priceless. So I think it makes sense to carve out little niches in life where things work nicely or to try to make things work better on small issues.