3 ms·

The dot com boom largely happened because of OS, as it allowed the fast creation/scaling of businesses in a way that would have been impossible otherwise. Big

by zeruch 3y ago

The dot com boom largely happened because of OS, as it allowed the fast creation/scaling of businesses in a way that would have been impossible otherwise. Big businesses didnt survive the dot com boom and bust because they had bigger budgets. If anything many overextended themselves (e.g. Sun) or missed the boat altogether and were obviated by FOSS (SGI, DEC, et al)

ke88y 3y ago
I'd argue the boom and also the bust happened for that exact reason. And that something similar is happening now with AI. Without OSS we might have seen a more tepid period in the late 90s (smaller boom), as only those who could licenses IBM-whatever or MS-whatever webservers and DBs could make it to market. But also a correspondingly smaller bust, because only those with $$$$ would be able to make the investment, and due to the big barrier to entry likely would've won out their categories. The fact that capabilities were open sourced confused the heck investors who'd been used to the MS/IBM world. They didn't understand how competition would work in the space. Hence terrible investment decisions that in retrospect look hilariously stupid. Don't get me wrong: I much prefer the OSS world. But it's an instructive historical example. Today in AI, any old huckster with a naive nephew who knows how to finetuning things can come to market with something that looks magical to the folks holding the money bags, who likely can't differentiate between trivial hacks on top of open models and a deeper tech moat.
- zeruch 3y ago
  Sun cannibalized itself as Linux cut into its entire server line except for the very top end, and their middle to high tiers were showing up on eBay by firms that went belly-up, further cutting their margins. It didn't help that McNealy followed himself with Zander(ok, but far from McNealy's abilities) and then the utterly useless Schwartz. Many of the others simply could not move fast enough after years of ossified businesses that were lucrative but becoming more limited. Yes, investors were confused (disclosure: I was at VA Linux Systems when it IPO'd) but that's never been a barrier to funding the right thing (anymore than being smart guaranteed you'd pick a winner...if VC's were half as good as they portray themselves, you'd think their win-rate would climb into double digits). The guys holding the moneybags could hire people to do the vetting, but they mostly pick insiders that maybe hit once or have otherwise sucked up with the appropriate fealty to Sand Hill "principles" than much else. When folks spend more effort fine tuning a PPT pitch than an actual business plan, it eventually shows.

by zeruch 3y ago

ke88y 3y ago

I'd argue the boom and also the bust happened for that exact reason. And that something similar is happening now with AI. Without OSS we might have seen a more tepid period in the late 90s (smaller boom), as only those who could licenses IBM-whatever or MS-whatever webservers and DBs could make it to market. But also a correspondingly smaller bust, because only those with $$$$ would be able to make the investment, and due to the big barrier to entry likely would've won out their categories. The fact that capabilities were open sourced confused the heck investors who'd been used to the MS/IBM world. They didn't understand how competition would work in the space. Hence terrible investment decisions that in retrospect look hilariously stupid. Don't get me wrong: I much prefer the OSS world. But it's an instructive historical example. Today in AI, any old huckster with a naive nephew who knows how to finetuning things can come to market with something that looks magical to the folks holding the money bags, who likely can't differentiate between trivial hacks on top of open models and a deeper tech moat.

zeruch 3y ago
Sun cannibalized itself as Linux cut into its entire server line except for the very top end, and their middle to high tiers were showing up on eBay by firms that went belly-up, further cutting their margins. It didn't help that McNealy followed himself with Zander(ok, but far from McNealy's abilities) and then the utterly useless Schwartz. Many of the others simply could not move fast enough after years of ossified businesses that were lucrative but becoming more limited. Yes, investors were confused (disclosure: I was at VA Linux Systems when it IPO'd) but that's never been a barrier to funding the right thing (anymore than being smart guaranteed you'd pick a winner...if VC's were half as good as they portray themselves, you'd think their win-rate would climb into double digits). The guys holding the moneybags could hire people to do the vetting, but they mostly pick insiders that maybe hit once or have otherwise sucked up with the appropriate fealty to Sand Hill "principles" than much else. When folks spend more effort fine tuning a PPT pitch than an actual business plan, it eventually shows.