5 ms·

I'm curious - why is there no open source solution to replace these apps? If not with full functionality, then at least with 80% of the features? The day to da

by sbacic 5y ago

I'm curious - why is there no open source solution to replace these apps? If not with full functionality, then at least with 80% of the features? The day to day running of the system for each particular market could be handled by an NGO, a cooperative or something of the sort.

solnyshok 5y ago
by Guild (by Union)?
bjackman 5y ago
I have actually thought about this a lot. I think the answer to your actual question (why not?) is obvious: people with the capital+skills to start this up do not have a solid profit motive. People who would benefit from it don't have capital+skills. However I think setting up something like a worker-owned cooperative to replace various gig economy companies would be a really cool project. Honestly if such a service existed, and my friends continued to use the (cheaper) VC-subsidised option, I'd ostracize them for it.
jsmith99 5y ago
Because it would not be competitive? Most of these apps are loss making. An open source solution wouldn't involve VCs subsidising your deliveries.
- sbacic 5y ago
  So let me get this straight - it's a bad deal for the restaurants, it's an increasingly bad deal for the deliverymen and it depends on VCs subsidizing it to even work? How did something like this even get funded? I mean, I could understand if the development costs were being funded by VC money, but actual deliveries? Even if one company were to actually dominate the market, it would still need to continue subsidizing variable costs and there is no moat to protect them from competition.
  - yetihehe 5y ago
    > How did something like this even get funded? I believe that it's "too much money sloshing around".
    - hutzlibu 5y ago
      And this is so weird. There are so many awesome projects struggling for funding and then there is "too much money sloshing around".
      - yetihehe 5y ago
        Because those awesome projects have low possible returns, or are not "web scale". VC's invest in projects that have high potential returns and growth possibilities.
  - eru 5y ago
    > [...] and there is no moat to protect them from competition. The moat might come: there's always pressure for more regulation. Once a company is established, it can yield to that pressure and even actively invite more regulation. Thanks to regulatory capture, regulation often acts as a moat for incumbents.
  - jpalomaki 5y ago
    Some people must believe this model can be made to work. I think it might happen via ghost kitchens. Distributed food preparation and couriers picking from small restaurants is inefficient. Larger kitchens, optimized for quick pickups, same people preparing food under many different brands. Maybe one can also rethink how the apps work, to bring bit more efficiency (if you control the larger part of the production chain). Most of the time when using these apps I'm hungry and I just want to eat. I would be actually quite happy, if the app could provide some decent recommendations on what could be delivered quickly.
    - timdaub 5y ago
      IMO this branch of the thread signifies the core of the issue. I'd argue that if we went down the rabbit hole of delivery startups to find where the thought originated that these kinds of businesses "must work somehow", we'd find irrationality. Recently, I've come to realize that maybe all that's bad in the world is simply that at one point in the value supply chain someone favored an irrational over a rational thought. In case that person was very influental, we get cases like this where food is delivered through a permanently unprofitable strategy. I wish we could just further rationalize the whole business to find the actual product's value and its market fit. Intuitively, it probably lays within canibalizing the actual business heavily and by e.g. not really delivering food on demand anymore. People just want the convenice of getting food quickl yand a wide variety + a threshold of quality. Delivery drivers are one option to a huge solution space. But those companies and investors can't afford to backtrack anymore. They now have to die to make space for a more adjusted solution. It's absurd.
d0mr 5y ago
There is, https://coopcycle.org https://coopcycle.org
- throw_m239339 5y ago
  Interesting, is the client or the server open source? Who finances that?
  - irtigor 5y ago
    I also got interested, there's a link to the github page near the bottom of the site: server is source available, commercial use is only allowed to co-ops and a few other entities, the client is opensource (MIT license).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rualca 5y ago
> I'm curious - why is there no open source solution to replace these apps? If not with full functionality, then at least with 80% of the features? Who would benefit from that? Delivery companies offer a simple and practical way to process orders and payments. Restaurant chains can and do provide their own in-house delivery services. The added-value is not the software infrastructure but the service that's provided. What exactly is the value proposition of open-sourcing a platform?
- ahepp 5y ago
  If the market operated more efficiently, everyone would benefit. The question is, would it be more efficient? I can imagine some kind of federated system where restaurants put out a contract in response to a customer order, workers bid on it. Maybe there's even blockchain based reviews. It seems that efficiently connecting buyers and sellers in the delivery labor market, without an middle party to collect huge fees, would be beneficial to everyone.
CryptoPunk 5y ago
These applications will 100% be decentralized, but cryptocurrency needs better scalability first. You can't be paying $20 in gas fees to place an order.
brundolf 5y ago
You're asking two different questions: an open source app is not an organization, and the organization does more than zero here (as another commenter said, you need cooperation) Secondly you suggest a co-op, which could maybe work if this were actually a profitable sector. Currently it's still loss-leading

by sbacic 5y ago

solnyshok 5y ago

by Guild (by Union)?

bjackman 5y ago

I have actually thought about this a lot. I think the answer to your actual question (why not?) is obvious: people with the capital+skills to start this up do not have a solid profit motive. People who would benefit from it don't have capital+skills. However I think setting up something like a worker-owned cooperative to replace various gig economy companies would be a really cool project. Honestly if such a service existed, and my friends continued to use the (cheaper) VC-subsidised option, I'd ostracize them for it.

jsmith99 5y ago

Because it would not be competitive? Most of these apps are loss making. An open source solution wouldn't involve VCs subsidising your deliveries.

sbacic 5y ago
So let me get this straight - it's a bad deal for the restaurants, it's an increasingly bad deal for the deliverymen and it depends on VCs subsidizing it to even work? How did something like this even get funded? I mean, I could understand if the development costs were being funded by VC money, but actual deliveries? Even if one company were to actually dominate the market, it would still need to continue subsidizing variable costs and there is no moat to protect them from competition.
- yetihehe 5y ago
  > How did something like this even get funded? I believe that it's "too much money sloshing around".
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    And this is so weird. There are so many awesome projects struggling for funding and then there is "too much money sloshing around".
    - yetihehe 5y ago
      Because those awesome projects have low possible returns, or are not "web scale". VC's invest in projects that have high potential returns and growth possibilities.
- eru 5y ago
  > [...] and there is no moat to protect them from competition. The moat might come: there's always pressure for more regulation. Once a company is established, it can yield to that pressure and even actively invite more regulation. Thanks to regulatory capture, regulation often acts as a moat for incumbents.
- jpalomaki 5y ago
  Some people must believe this model can be made to work. I think it might happen via ghost kitchens. Distributed food preparation and couriers picking from small restaurants is inefficient. Larger kitchens, optimized for quick pickups, same people preparing food under many different brands. Maybe one can also rethink how the apps work, to bring bit more efficiency (if you control the larger part of the production chain). Most of the time when using these apps I'm hungry and I just want to eat. I would be actually quite happy, if the app could provide some decent recommendations on what could be delivered quickly.
  - timdaub 5y ago
    IMO this branch of the thread signifies the core of the issue. I'd argue that if we went down the rabbit hole of delivery startups to find where the thought originated that these kinds of businesses "must work somehow", we'd find irrationality. Recently, I've come to realize that maybe all that's bad in the world is simply that at one point in the value supply chain someone favored an irrational over a rational thought. In case that person was very influental, we get cases like this where food is delivered through a permanently unprofitable strategy. I wish we could just further rationalize the whole business to find the actual product's value and its market fit. Intuitively, it probably lays within canibalizing the actual business heavily and by e.g. not really delivering food on demand anymore. People just want the convenice of getting food quickl yand a wide variety + a threshold of quality. Delivery drivers are one option to a huge solution space. But those companies and investors can't afford to backtrack anymore. They now have to die to make space for a more adjusted solution. It's absurd.

d0mr 5y ago

There is, https://coopcycle.org https://coopcycle.org

throw_m239339 5y ago
Interesting, is the client or the server open source? Who finances that?
- irtigor 5y ago
  I also got interested, there's a link to the github page near the bottom of the site: server is source available, commercial use is only allowed to co-ops and a few other entities, the client is opensource (MIT license).

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

rualca 5y ago

> I'm curious - why is there no open source solution to replace these apps? If not with full functionality, then at least with 80% of the features? Who would benefit from that? Delivery companies offer a simple and practical way to process orders and payments. Restaurant chains can and do provide their own in-house delivery services. The added-value is not the software infrastructure but the service that's provided. What exactly is the value proposition of open-sourcing a platform?

ahepp 5y ago
If the market operated more efficiently, everyone would benefit. The question is, would it be more efficient? I can imagine some kind of federated system where restaurants put out a contract in response to a customer order, workers bid on it. Maybe there's even blockchain based reviews. It seems that efficiently connecting buyers and sellers in the delivery labor market, without an middle party to collect huge fees, would be beneficial to everyone.

CryptoPunk 5y ago

These applications will 100% be decentralized, but cryptocurrency needs better scalability first. You can't be paying $20 in gas fees to place an order.

brundolf 5y ago

You're asking two different questions: an open source app is not an organization, and the organization does more than zero here (as another commenter said, you need cooperation) Secondly you suggest a co-op, which could maybe work if this were actually a profitable sector. Currently it's still loss-leading