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> but they can make much more money writing software and not giving it away Hey guess what. It's possible to take an Apache 2.0 codebase, let's say Lucene, and

> but they can make much more money writing software and not giving it away Hey guess what. It's possible to take an Apache 2.0 codebase, let's say Lucene, and then build more Apache 2.0 code on top of it, give it away entirely for free, and still build a $15B business. And you think capitalism has failed here? Absolute nonsense.

geofft 6y ago
Yes, it's possible to take an existing Apache 2.0 codebase, release some new Apache 2.0 code, build a $15B business, and then stop offering your code under Apache 2.0. Great! Shareholder value! That's literally what you set out to do! How could it have possibly failed? What I'm actually saying is that when people think that outcome is a bad thing, their beef is with our particular breed of capitalism. When they say "This good outcome could have been so much better, had there been regulations on breaking up large companies so they can't bully small ones," then what they're saying is that they're objecting to the free market as it exists in our particular breed of capitalism. And when they say, as others say, "This good outcome could have been so much better if it weren't for the dictators at the OSI micromanaging the term 'open source'," then what they're actually saying is they're objecting to companies freely choosing to believe what the OSI says, because the OSI has no power. If you think that something was short of the mark here, that something was our breed of capitalism. I'm agreeing with you. Capitalism did not fail. It did what everyone expected it to do. If you're happy with the outcome, great! I'm not telling anyone they ought to be unhappy with the outcome. But if you are unhappy with the outcome, I'm telling you why.
- __blockcipher__ 6y ago
  The reason I'm happy with Capitalism is because Elastic backstabbed the community and in a manner of weeks we'll have community-driven Apache 2.0 forks. So I think the market is responding as it should and am happy to see it. > This good outcome could have been so much better, had there been regulations on breaking up large companies so they can't bully small ones Well, I disagree with the (I think?) implication that Amazon is doing any bullying here, and I disagree that companies should be broken up purely for their size. But since we're getting into anti-trust authority, perhaps I can convince you to throw the ring into Mordor: While anti-trust could theoretically fight monopolies, those laws exist within a system in which special interests will co-opt those powers to essentially defend their own monopolies. So, big company X kicks over the right amount of lobbying dollars and magically the politicians want to bring an anti-trust suit against competitor Y, etc. Now the blue-pilled response is to say, "hey that's just another failure of capitalism, and that's why we need to get money out of politics!". In my unashamedly biased opinion, the red-pilled answer is to realize that these power structures will always be co-opted and the best solution is decentralization and therefore not having a state that can hand out bailouts, force small businesses to close up shop, discriminate against low-skilled workers with minimum wage regulations, exert arbitrary power through anti-trust legislation, etc. Sorry, I kind of got down a philosophical rabbithole.
  - geofft 6y ago
    It is the state that recognizes Amazon and Elastic in the first place, though. Without the state's involvement, a developer at Elastic could choose to continue releasing their work product to the world under an open-source license - and a developer at AWS could choose to release the secret sauce that makes AWS's Elasticsearch such a threat to Elastic. We're having this whole conversation about whether big companies might subvert and coerce the state without recognizing that they already do coerce it by making the state recognize their very existence. They would have no power without that (what is a lobbyist without anything to lobby on behalf of?), but they've been so successful at hawking their narrative that all of us think it's perfectly normal and inevitable that they exist. Take that red-and-black pill (either because it's half-doomer or because it's ancom, either way) and chew on it.
  - Chris2048 6y ago
    > Elastic backstabbed the community I seem to recall something like this. I also recall working with ES and having a negative impression on it based on some technical detail - but I can't recall what that was :-/

geofft 6y ago

Yes, it's possible to take an existing Apache 2.0 codebase, release some new Apache 2.0 code, build a $15B business, and then stop offering your code under Apache 2.0. Great! Shareholder value! That's literally what you set out to do! How could it have possibly failed? What I'm actually saying is that when people think that outcome is a bad thing, their beef is with our particular breed of capitalism. When they say "This good outcome could have been so much better, had there been regulations on breaking up large companies so they can't bully small ones," then what they're saying is that they're objecting to the free market as it exists in our particular breed of capitalism. And when they say, as others say, "This good outcome could have been so much better if it weren't for the dictators at the OSI micromanaging the term 'open source'," then what they're actually saying is they're objecting to companies freely choosing to believe what the OSI says, because the OSI has no power. If you think that something was short of the mark here, that something was our breed of capitalism. I'm agreeing with you. Capitalism did not fail. It did what everyone expected it to do. If you're happy with the outcome, great! I'm not telling anyone they ought to be unhappy with the outcome. But if you are unhappy with the outcome, I'm telling you why.

__blockcipher__ 6y ago
The reason I'm happy with Capitalism is because Elastic backstabbed the community and in a manner of weeks we'll have community-driven Apache 2.0 forks. So I think the market is responding as it should and am happy to see it. > This good outcome could have been so much better, had there been regulations on breaking up large companies so they can't bully small ones Well, I disagree with the (I think?) implication that Amazon is doing any bullying here, and I disagree that companies should be broken up purely for their size. But since we're getting into anti-trust authority, perhaps I can convince you to throw the ring into Mordor: While anti-trust could theoretically fight monopolies, those laws exist within a system in which special interests will co-opt those powers to essentially defend their own monopolies. So, big company X kicks over the right amount of lobbying dollars and magically the politicians want to bring an anti-trust suit against competitor Y, etc. Now the blue-pilled response is to say, "hey that's just another failure of capitalism, and that's why we need to get money out of politics!". In my unashamedly biased opinion, the red-pilled answer is to realize that these power structures will always be co-opted and the best solution is decentralization and therefore not having a state that can hand out bailouts, force small businesses to close up shop, discriminate against low-skilled workers with minimum wage regulations, exert arbitrary power through anti-trust legislation, etc. Sorry, I kind of got down a philosophical rabbithole.
- geofft 6y ago
  It is the state that recognizes Amazon and Elastic in the first place, though. Without the state's involvement, a developer at Elastic could choose to continue releasing their work product to the world under an open-source license - and a developer at AWS could choose to release the secret sauce that makes AWS's Elasticsearch such a threat to Elastic. We're having this whole conversation about whether big companies might subvert and coerce the state without recognizing that they already do coerce it by making the state recognize their very existence. They would have no power without that (what is a lobbyist without anything to lobby on behalf of?), but they've been so successful at hawking their narrative that all of us think it's perfectly normal and inevitable that they exist. Take that red-and-black pill (either because it's half-doomer or because it's ancom, either way) and chew on it.
- Chris2048 6y ago
  > Elastic backstabbed the community I seem to recall something like this. I also recall working with ES and having a negative impression on it based on some technical detail - but I can't recall what that was :-/