3 ms·

I was going to observe that another totally-understandable reaction to getting fucked in a business transaction (or getting cholera from untreated water) is to

I 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 ago
The 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 ago
I think the correct analogue here are the people saying "open source or GTFO".
- __d 3y ago
  There 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 ago
    Does 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 ago
      The BSD unixes are the classic example.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
    > 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. And that's still better than being stuck with arbitrary price changes.
  - marcosdumay 3y ago
    What you mean? Open source completely avoid this one problem. Apache-style development was created exactly for that. You can complain that it's way overkill and a company doesn't actually need that level of assurance. But you can't claim it's not sufficient.
    - __d 3y ago
      Having a tarball of the source code for something isn't the same as having the community, the history, the culture, the processes, the infrastructure ... all the accumulated other stuff that makes up an open source project. Without the concentration of diverse efforts that go into maintaining and advancing a project, having the source code (alone) is of minimal benefit.

prerok 3y ago

The 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 ago

I think the correct analogue here are the people saying "open source or GTFO".

__d 3y ago
There 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 ago
  Does 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 ago
    The BSD unixes are the classic example.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  > 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. And that's still better than being stuck with arbitrary price changes.
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  What you mean? Open source completely avoid this one problem. Apache-style development was created exactly for that. You can complain that it's way overkill and a company doesn't actually need that level of assurance. But you can't claim it's not sufficient.
  - __d 3y ago
    Having a tarball of the source code for something isn't the same as having the community, the history, the culture, the processes, the infrastructure ... all the accumulated other stuff that makes up an open source project. Without the concentration of diverse efforts that go into maintaining and advancing a project, having the source code (alone) is of minimal benefit.