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Oh man, a friend and I were thinking of building out a FOSS Uber clone for this exact purpose. Would allow a bunch of smaller regional Ubers to exist. Couldn't
by djbusby 3y ago
Oh man, a friend and I were thinking of building out a FOSS Uber clone for this exact purpose. Would allow a bunch of smaller regional Ubers to exist.
Couldn't get funding and I don't have free time to write that much code.
Hope these folks are able to succeed.
FOSS is a great path for workers to seize the means of production.
- mchannon 3y agoLibreTaxi has been around since 2016.
- Daz1 3y ago[flagged]
- bentobean 3y ago> Couldn’t get funding Can’t imagine why.
- throwaway413 3y agoCan you elaborate? Curious.
- bentobean 3y ago[flagged]
- arjvik 3y agoThis comes across as overly snarky. At best, you delayed productive conversation by the time needed for two asynchronous comments. At worst, you shame someone out of getting an answer to their question.
- EGreg 3y agoI think you have a failure of imagination. Who says that selling shares is the only way to raise capital?
- renewiltord 3y agoA bit self-evident, isn't it? No one is going to give you capital so that you can hire workers to seize the capital.
- EGreg 3y agoHow about the workers and the customers ?? That’s why I am a fan of crowdfunding with utility tokens. People on HN have to realize there is more to capitalism than shareholder capitalism and extracting rents from ecosystems ;-)
- aiappreciator 3y agoThe customers want to donate money to local taxi operators and drivers? The taxi drivers who barely understand what open source is? This can work, but definitely not through crowdfunding. This better works through say business associations, say a national taxi association (composed of all small/regional taxi operators). That association can allocate a small portion of the funds to build this open taxi framework.
- safety1st 3y agoThe thing about software is it's remarkably cheap in the grand scheme of things. To choose two random modern examples, Signal and Lemmy both got their start with a little bit of funding from nonprofits. Signal then basically funded its bills with a Whatsapp consulting contract and now it pays for a CEO that goes around doing prime TV appearances where she shoots down politicians who are trying to rob you of your freedom. That's a hell of a story arc.
- djbusby 3y agoI'll tell you why: my friend, our lead investor and champion, with connections to a few driver-communities unexpectedly died.
- EGreg 3y agoThere is no seizing here. FOSS is available to all, no one actually loses the means of production. It’s “distributism” rather than “socialism”. Anyway — FOSS can be crowdfunded by selling utility tokens to future customers. If you are worried about the SEC, then just use a broker-dealer like Rialto Markets to help you do Reg CF.
- throwaway892238 3y ago> FOSS is a great path for workers to seize the means of production. It's... not. Open Source is not a business model, nor a collective organizing principle, bargaining process, etc. It's just source code a couple of people have commit access to. I'm all in favor of everybody sharing source code too, but let's not pretend it's magic. Building and sustaining any kind of organization takes work, and has nothing to do with whether your source code is open or closed.
- safety1st 3y agoFOSS absolutely does have an effect on how your movement is organized and if you depend on it it can be an accelerator. But FOSS doesn't create some kind of socialist utopia as some people seem to believe. It does something much more mundane yet infinitely more valuable in our fractured modern world: it unites bitter enemies and gets them to collaborate. Look at the contributors to the Linux kernel, which even includes Microsoft now. It's hard to imagine any other force which could unite all those people and businesses under a common cause. But thanks to the GPL, even as their wars with each other continue they are all contributing resources to the public good. It's so popular these days to flame and dehumanize the other side of any debate but all that does is destroy. FOSS builds and extends humanity's common heritage. It won't win the war for you but it will redirect your energies into creation and ensure that you leave something good behind.
- MSFT_Edging 3y agoThank you for writing this out, I never worded it like this to myself but it makes so much sense. I love the FOSS movement's use of the legal system, mixed with ease of adoption, to force big players to contribute. FOSS, while not being a socialist utopia, is one of the few truly cooperative systems in our society, and it also goes to show you cannot trust people(corporations) to contribute out of the good of their heart, you have to force their hand through the very tools(ip law) that these people and corporations use to wield their own power. This may stray past your original point, but whenever I hear someone complain about something being "authoritarian", I find it hard to take seriously because the profit motive almost always goes against a general common good. ie covid lockdowns, lives saved vs dollars earned, where do your priorities lie?
- pabs3 3y agoThere is LibreTaxi for that: https://libretaxi.org/ https://libretaxi.org/
- capableweb 3y agoUnfortunately, seems like it hasn't been maintained for quite a while (https://github.com/ro31337/libretaxi/graphs/contributors https://github.com/ro31337/libretaxi/graphs/contributors), doesn't support credit/debit cards (cash only) and also doesn't seem to offer any safety features (any driver can sign up at any time without any sort of verification)
- aaa_aaa 3y ago> FOSS is a great path for workers to seize the means of production. Good for people who works for themselves but please can we stop implying they are doing this for pushing communist ideals?