3 ms·

> The extractive behavior the tech giants exhibit has been the norm for modern capitalism since Milton Friedman set its objective function in 1970: “The social

by ehnto 6y ago

> The extractive behavior the tech giants exhibit has been the norm for modern capitalism since Milton Friedman set its objective function in 1970: “The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.” This is all the sadder, though, since the tech industry set out to model something better. The generosity of open source software and the World Wide Web, the genius of algorithmically amplified collective intelligence are still there... I don't buy that at all, the tech INDUSTRY was the result of attempting to extract value out of technology. I have to scoff at the inclusion of "algorithmically amplified intelligence" as one of the egalitarian core values of SV. If you hadn't caught on by then, you must have been heady off the fumes of it all.

onethought 6y ago
So open source was just tech people not understanding their core purpose of "extract value out of technology" ?
- ehnto 6y ago
  Open source is an entirely different movement. OSS is written the world over, yet SV is where everyone is busy extracting orders of magnitude of value from it. From plenty of experience, SV open sources because it provides a business advantage, because it costs them nothing or because it's part of the business model of OSS+Support. Individual contributors are the heroes here, people doing it for the love of the software. The software industry will spin their work for a dollar all fucking day with no contribution back.
  - onethought 6y ago
    Oh really... So the open source code that contributed/drove the delivery of that comment wasn't written in SV? edit: To the second part of your comment... so why are the browsers all open source (at least at their core)? What's the business advantage? The non-organisational contributors are hardly the "heroes" of those projects. And they have contributed a ridiculous amount of free value to world.
    - ehnto 6y ago
      There is no doubt that the vast majority of open source software comes out of the software industry in SV. The arguing point I have is that it isn't out of an egalitarian view from the industry to provide for others and make the world better, generally speaking. Exceptions abound, sure. But the industry is busy making money, the fact that say Chromium and Webkit are open source is a very good example of how a company can use open source to leverage a competitive advantage. My main gripe with the article is that it tried to conflate the technology movement and the software industry. Tied tightly together no doubt, but they are different. The very nature of the industry is to make money and that is totally fine, but let's not pretend the industry was some utopian ideal from the outset. As I said in my first comment, the industry specifically, grew out of the attempt to extract value from the technology. That's fine. It hasn't been twisted over time, it just is what it is. I may have been flippant in my commentary.
- jjtheblunt 6y ago
  For some business plans, open source is a means of keeping competitors some number of releases behind internal development, perpetually, while they're none the wiser.

by ehnto 6y ago

onethought 6y ago

So open source was just tech people not understanding their core purpose of "extract value out of technology" ?

ehnto 6y ago
Open source is an entirely different movement. OSS is written the world over, yet SV is where everyone is busy extracting orders of magnitude of value from it. From plenty of experience, SV open sources because it provides a business advantage, because it costs them nothing or because it's part of the business model of OSS+Support. Individual contributors are the heroes here, people doing it for the love of the software. The software industry will spin their work for a dollar all fucking day with no contribution back.
- onethought 6y ago
  Oh really... So the open source code that contributed/drove the delivery of that comment wasn't written in SV? edit: To the second part of your comment... so why are the browsers all open source (at least at their core)? What's the business advantage? The non-organisational contributors are hardly the "heroes" of those projects. And they have contributed a ridiculous amount of free value to world.
  - ehnto 6y ago
    There is no doubt that the vast majority of open source software comes out of the software industry in SV. The arguing point I have is that it isn't out of an egalitarian view from the industry to provide for others and make the world better, generally speaking. Exceptions abound, sure. But the industry is busy making money, the fact that say Chromium and Webkit are open source is a very good example of how a company can use open source to leverage a competitive advantage. My main gripe with the article is that it tried to conflate the technology movement and the software industry. Tied tightly together no doubt, but they are different. The very nature of the industry is to make money and that is totally fine, but let's not pretend the industry was some utopian ideal from the outset. As I said in my first comment, the industry specifically, grew out of the attempt to extract value from the technology. That's fine. It hasn't been twisted over time, it just is what it is. I may have been flippant in my commentary.
jjtheblunt 6y ago
For some business plans, open source is a means of keeping competitors some number of releases behind internal development, perpetually, while they're none the wiser.