4 ms·

If this is the case then it means that there is no competition in the ecosystem and that the regulators need to start busting monopolies and other anticompetiti

by tgbugs 4y ago

If this is the case then it means that there is no competition in the ecosystem and that the regulators need to start busting monopolies and other anticompetitive behavior. In a competitive market where there is actually free entry and free exit and consumers are not locked in there should be no such thing as diminishing returns at the level of brokenness we see here, unless we somehow think that writing functioning software is somehow impossibly difficult.

majormajor 4y ago
Do you have any fields in mind where people are picking "perfect at higher cost" over "cheap and crappy but adequate" en masse? I have trouble thinking of any, and "lack of competition" hardly seems to be the reason. "Race to the bottom" isn't something that happens without competition, after all.
- tgbugs 4y ago
  I'm oversimplifying a bit here, but I think the strategy that most major software firms are following right now would match the "adaptive radiation" phase of ecosystem evolution. There are so many empty niches as a result of the high dimensional space of user requirements (where say, 2 additional features are sufficient to differentiate a product, see e.g. discussions about slack vs discord vs teams from today) that companies hardly need directly compete with each other. This would be a virtuous explanation for lack of competition. Another candidate explanation for what is going on in your "race to the bottom" likely has to do more with signal to noise issues and other types of adverse selection where e.g. a company needs to spend only just enough money for a product to make it past the average review date, at which point the device/whatever will fail. These literally marginal devices/software/whatever are then sold by literally copying and pasting the specs from some other product that is selling well and now consumers are toast. In the software world this looks like a billion clones of the same game, etc. This however is not what I would call good faith competition, and in biological systems species that do this eventually get wiped away completely when they finish degrading the ecosystem they are in. This will look like a mobile gaming crash (about which there seem to be some google hits for back at the start of August). The kinds of things I'm thinking about are e.g. the fact that text selection in HTML documents is SO BAD that people have started to add copy buttons. Want to copy a url out of some calendaring software? OOPS NO you actually wanted to select literally all the other text on the page right? There are what 2.5ish major browser vendors (supposedly) now? That is by design and a sign of anticompetitive behavior. Another example would be the GTK+ file picker. Though in this case it is far more likely that the desktop linux environment is extremely marginal in terms of capital than anticompetitive behavior on the part of redhat.
  - cxr 4y ago
    > The kinds of things I'm thinking about are e.g. the fact that text selection in HTML documents is SO BAD that people have started to add copy buttons. What are you referring to?
westoncb 4y ago
The top level structure of this argument is: the argument I gave above can only be correct if: all the companies producing software at the present typical quality level are operating as monopolies. You support that stance by saying the only way to account for the present level of software quality is if it were the case that no competition existed for the companies producing the software. So the argument would be invalidated if there were another way of accounting for it, which there is: it's possible that the present typical level of software quality is not bad enough for it to require that the companies producing it have no competitors. So to make this argument compelling you'd need something to establish that the typical level of quality actually is bad enough to create that circumstance. Otherwise the argument is more simply resolved by the possibility that your perception of where typical software quality is, may itself be incorrect.
- tgbugs 4y ago
  I think there is an additional possibility, which is that the software quality is bad enough, but there is no where else for users to go. Since proving that directly would require a viable competitor to already exist we are in a bind. However, we might be able to find some examples where there are viable competitors, or we might be able to find a population of users who have enough experience with similar pieces of software to be able to state which one has fewer bugs (at least for their usual workflows). One category of software that comes to mind for me would be 3d modelling and rendering software. Perhaps examining the impact that Blender has had on quality would be a place to start? edit: I do think that the activation energy (capital) required to get competitors off the ground at this stage is enormous, but that is in part because many of the alternatives have been allowed to die out or be acquired by their direct competitors. Had they been kept alive an independent there would not be a need for so much capital to get back in the game. Sadly, now, many years on, the remaining systems have acquired enough complexity that they can fend of most competition without much effort.

by tgbugs 4y ago

majormajor 4y ago

Do you have any fields in mind where people are picking "perfect at higher cost" over "cheap and crappy but adequate" en masse? I have trouble thinking of any, and "lack of competition" hardly seems to be the reason. "Race to the bottom" isn't something that happens without competition, after all.

tgbugs 4y ago
I'm oversimplifying a bit here, but I think the strategy that most major software firms are following right now would match the "adaptive radiation" phase of ecosystem evolution. There are so many empty niches as a result of the high dimensional space of user requirements (where say, 2 additional features are sufficient to differentiate a product, see e.g. discussions about slack vs discord vs teams from today) that companies hardly need directly compete with each other. This would be a virtuous explanation for lack of competition. Another candidate explanation for what is going on in your "race to the bottom" likely has to do more with signal to noise issues and other types of adverse selection where e.g. a company needs to spend only just enough money for a product to make it past the average review date, at which point the device/whatever will fail. These literally marginal devices/software/whatever are then sold by literally copying and pasting the specs from some other product that is selling well and now consumers are toast. In the software world this looks like a billion clones of the same game, etc. This however is not what I would call good faith competition, and in biological systems species that do this eventually get wiped away completely when they finish degrading the ecosystem they are in. This will look like a mobile gaming crash (about which there seem to be some google hits for back at the start of August). The kinds of things I'm thinking about are e.g. the fact that text selection in HTML documents is SO BAD that people have started to add copy buttons. Want to copy a url out of some calendaring software? OOPS NO you actually wanted to select literally all the other text on the page right? There are what 2.5ish major browser vendors (supposedly) now? That is by design and a sign of anticompetitive behavior. Another example would be the GTK+ file picker. Though in this case it is far more likely that the desktop linux environment is extremely marginal in terms of capital than anticompetitive behavior on the part of redhat.
- cxr 4y ago
  > The kinds of things I'm thinking about are e.g. the fact that text selection in HTML documents is SO BAD that people have started to add copy buttons. What are you referring to?

westoncb 4y ago

The top level structure of this argument is: the argument I gave above can only be correct if: all the companies producing software at the present typical quality level are operating as monopolies. You support that stance by saying the only way to account for the present level of software quality is if it were the case that no competition existed for the companies producing the software. So the argument would be invalidated if there were another way of accounting for it, which there is: it's possible that the present typical level of software quality is not bad enough for it to require that the companies producing it have no competitors. So to make this argument compelling you'd need something to establish that the typical level of quality actually is bad enough to create that circumstance. Otherwise the argument is more simply resolved by the possibility that your perception of where typical software quality is, may itself be incorrect.

tgbugs 4y ago
I think there is an additional possibility, which is that the software quality is bad enough, but there is no where else for users to go. Since proving that directly would require a viable competitor to already exist we are in a bind. However, we might be able to find some examples where there are viable competitors, or we might be able to find a population of users who have enough experience with similar pieces of software to be able to state which one has fewer bugs (at least for their usual workflows). One category of software that comes to mind for me would be 3d modelling and rendering software. Perhaps examining the impact that Blender has had on quality would be a place to start? edit: I do think that the activation energy (capital) required to get competitors off the ground at this stage is enormous, but that is in part because many of the alternatives have been allowed to die out or be acquired by their direct competitors. Had they been kept alive an independent there would not be a need for so much capital to get back in the game. Sadly, now, many years on, the remaining systems have acquired enough complexity that they can fend of most competition without much effort.