4 ms·

Why does such a thing need to be a business to begin with? Just host a github or expose this functionality on wikipedia.

d1str0 3y ago
No one said it had to be a business. They were making the point that its hard to keep something like that running and maintained for free.
- gpvos 3y ago
  Crowdsource it. Something like Wikipedia might work.
  - rat9988 3y ago
    Then do it.
  - thephyber 3y ago
    My point was there have already been open source / crowdsourced efforts and they typically fail — because the effort is high and there is little/no money because people don’t actually value the result. Solve the sustainable efforts problem and/or make the TOS publishing required to go to a standard service (like US public stocks have to publish forms to SEC.gov)
iamacyborg 3y ago
Self hosted mediawiki is easy enough
gls2ro 3y ago
Hosting is not the problem that generates the need for a business. The problem is having people available to do the work that is needed to keep the system useful and up-to-date, which includes writing code that will parse the ToS, maintaining it, and upgrading programming languages, packages ... and most probably lawyers. So where those diffs are hosted is a tiny cost of what is needed to make it work. All these require effort. And effort can be paid with one of two things: time and money. And for someone to have time to work full-time on this, they need to have ... money to sustain themselves. Thus this kind of project needs money => that either can be a grant, donation from a big entity, or business model. Donations from users are not working for long-term sustainability in most cases of good projects for society. Or at least I don't know a successful project like this.
thephyber 3y ago
My point wasn’t that it can’t be done without a business. It was that people came up with this idea over a decade ago and those projects peter out. Without a business model, there is no incentive for the work to continue to get done. People are too eager to expect some other person to invest their own time and effort in an open source project without considering the consequences of such an expectation.

d1str0 3y ago

No one said it had to be a business. They were making the point that its hard to keep something like that running and maintained for free.

gpvos 3y ago
Crowdsource it. Something like Wikipedia might work.
- rat9988 3y ago
  Then do it.
- thephyber 3y ago
  My point was there have already been open source / crowdsourced efforts and they typically fail — because the effort is high and there is little/no money because people don’t actually value the result. Solve the sustainable efforts problem and/or make the TOS publishing required to go to a standard service (like US public stocks have to publish forms to SEC.gov)

iamacyborg 3y ago

Self hosted mediawiki is easy enough

gls2ro 3y ago

Hosting is not the problem that generates the need for a business. The problem is having people available to do the work that is needed to keep the system useful and up-to-date, which includes writing code that will parse the ToS, maintaining it, and upgrading programming languages, packages ... and most probably lawyers. So where those diffs are hosted is a tiny cost of what is needed to make it work. All these require effort. And effort can be paid with one of two things: time and money. And for someone to have time to work full-time on this, they need to have ... money to sustain themselves. Thus this kind of project needs money => that either can be a grant, donation from a big entity, or business model. Donations from users are not working for long-term sustainability in most cases of good projects for society. Or at least I don't know a successful project like this.

thephyber 3y ago

My point wasn’t that it can’t be done without a business. It was that people came up with this idea over a decade ago and those projects peter out. Without a business model, there is no incentive for the work to continue to get done. People are too eager to expect some other person to invest their own time and effort in an open source project without considering the consequences of such an expectation.