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Well, I don't have all the answers for every industry, but the broad strokes as what I said. Utility tokens really only work when you need services of other peo
by EGreg 3y ago
Well, I don't have all the answers for every industry, but the broad strokes as what I said. Utility tokens really only work when you need services of other people in a network, often requested and delivered over a network. They aren't really as useful for software that you can run locally on your computer. So, for example, hosting RedHat software on an Amazon instance, RedHat can work with Amazon to make sure it enforces licensing fees. If Amazon doesn't then RedHat can, theoretically, sue the company or pull its licensing for any further instances, hurting both companies.
But RedHat could launch a new product line centering around servers running their machines, "commoditizing their complements", and doing jobs. Kind of like Adobe turned to SaaS instead of software running on your computer. Or how wordpress.com makes the bulk of the money for Automattic instead of self-hosted Wordpress. They'd have to start managing infrastructure, basically, or partner with Amazon as they already do.
I guess my overall point is that more software should be funded in the beginning using utility tokens, so they never get a big shareholder class and thus never have to go IPO to generate a return. Thus they never have to impress investors on Wall Street earnings calls, by how many rents they've extracted from their ecosystem via greater enshittification.
- tonyarkles 3y agoAhhh ok, I think that's where the wires got crossed. From your original post, I got the impression that you were suggesting that somehow RedHat's existing business model could be converted to using utility tokens and allow them to freely redistribute all of their RPM sources and build scripts without having their OS distribution cloned. I suppose my last question, having flipped around through the Qbix site a fair bit and grokking a bunch of the concepts of how it all fits together... I think I get how Qbux move around the network and get distributed to software authors, but how do I convert Qbux into food and rent? Is the expectation that there'll be some kind of exchange set up where I'd periodically auction off my accumulated Qbux?