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If you drink from a river and get cholera, would you drink from that river again in the future? It might be fine! Maybe on that particular day, somebody with c
by nwiswell 3y ago
If you drink from a river and get cholera, would you drink from that river again in the future?
It might be fine! Maybe on that particular day, somebody with cholera had just taken a shit upstream, and the bacteria are totally gone now. But it's still a useful prior, and that's the case here with whom you choose to conduct business.
I think it's a question of burden of proof. You'd ordinarily not worry too much about cholera, but after an incident you'd want the water thoroughly and repeatedly tested. You probably would not say "eh, it's been 5 or 10 years, it's most likely fine."
Similarly you'd want some concrete evidence that a company has actually changed, in a degree sufficient to offset your negative prior, before you'd consider engaging in any further business with them.
But actually doing that research is a pain in the ass, so I think it's a reasonable strategy to simply prefer companies that haven't screwed you over wherever good options exist.
- JohnFen 3y ago> If you drink from a river and get cholera, would you drink from that river again in the future? No. Further, I'd stop drinking untreated water from all rivers. (Just answering your hypothetical. I spend a lot of time in the wilderness and wouldn't drink untreated water from a river or lake to begin with.) This effect, though, has happened with software for me years ago. Enough bad actors exist that I've reached the place where I trust very few software houses (and I trust exactly zero SV-style companies). Not that all of those rivers are polluted, of course, but that it's impossible to tell which ones are and which ones aren't by looking at them. I would never dare to start a business that depended on any of them. The risk is simply too great.
- nwiswell 3y agoI was going to observe that another totally-understandable reaction to getting fucked in a business transaction (or getting cholera from untreated water) is to begin researching everyone you do business with (or testing/treating all the water you drink). I may be stretching the limits of the analogy here, but either way that "verify, then trust" approach is more work than "adaptive blissful ignorance", and a lot of people aren't going to do it, or will at least slack off as the pain of the original incident becomes a more distant memory.
- prerok 3y agoThe thing is, I think no amount of research would have pointed to this possibility. At least it would not a couple of years back. The mere fact that this group in OP exists/existed would have pointed to their trustworthiness.
- JohnFen 3y ago"verify, then trust" is problematic in a world where companies get bought and sold, management changes, business goals shift, etc. The only protection against this is contracts, but when a company -- like Unity has done twice now -- decides to retroactively change the terms of existing contracts, that means that you cannot trust them at all going into the future even if they're solidly "good" right now.
- marcosdumay 3y agoI think the correct analogue here are the people saying "open source or GTFO".
- __d 3y agoThere are limits to what open source can do too. Perhaps it's necessary, but not sufficient? There's limited benefit to having the source code when the community has been splintered, and the future direction is contrary to your needs. Sure, you can make your own fixes, etc, but you no longer enjoy the leverage community development.
- Tijdreiziger 3y agoDoes that actually happen all that much? In the cases I can think of (OpenOffice.org, ffmpeg, OpenWRT), the community ended up concentrating around either the original project or the fork (in other words, the community didn’t really splinter, just move).
- __d 3y agoThe BSD unixes are the classic example.