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> they are fundamentally laundering free innovations done by a very small number of people, like Linux Kernel developer. They will not stick around There's a b

> they are fundamentally laundering free innovations done by a very small number of people, like Linux Kernel developer. They will not stick around There's a big difference between inventing something (Linus Torvalds as the "genius big picture guy" who gets paid in fame) and turning it into a viable business that customers can depend on (the boring "execution guy" who gets paid in money). It's like how research labs in universities often develop some new technology, and a for-profit firm takes it to market. People get all up in arms about this laundering of free innovations without realizing that the two take very different skill-sets and require very different incentive structures.

doctorpangloss 3y ago
It makes sense that research gets spun off into commercial technologies. It doesn't make sense for there to be 15 different vendors, each claiming to have a special technology, when it was all the same free technology all along. Their differentiation is imaginary. That's why I use the word laundering in one sense: they are turning the same innovation used by everyone into a fake unique innovation in their marketing materials. Now, it's not network hardware people alone who do this. You can go to DuckDuckGo or Cloudflare, they do the same thing, they give fancy proprietary-sounding names to free stuff they pick up off the Internet too. I'm not saying that's bad, and I'm not saying it doesn't exist. It does exist, it is good. It just isn't something that sustains 15 companies all doing it at the same time, just one company can do that, it will take all the prizes. And that's why it's laundering, because the competition was imaginary, you might as well have gone straight to the source in the first place, and indeed, that will happen! It happens in operating systems, which encompass huge amounts of software functionality nowadays, it will happen in networking hardware.
- nsteel 3y ago
  What can you pick up free off the internet that will help you design, build and support https://www.nokia.com/networks/mobile-networks/reefshark/ https://www.nokia.com/networks/mobile-networks/reefshark/, https://www.nokia.com/networks/ip-networks/fpcx/ https://www.nokia.com/networks/ip-networks/fpcx/ or https://www.nokia.com/networks/technologies/fp5/ https://www.nokia.com/networks/technologies/fp5/ ? These hardware products (and their supporting software) are the foundation of what Nokia is selling. There might be Linux running on top (or on the side) of this, but that isn't really the part people are paying for.

doctorpangloss 3y ago

It makes sense that research gets spun off into commercial technologies. It doesn't make sense for there to be 15 different vendors, each claiming to have a special technology, when it was all the same free technology all along. Their differentiation is imaginary. That's why I use the word laundering in one sense: they are turning the same innovation used by everyone into a fake unique innovation in their marketing materials. Now, it's not network hardware people alone who do this. You can go to DuckDuckGo or Cloudflare, they do the same thing, they give fancy proprietary-sounding names to free stuff they pick up off the Internet too. I'm not saying that's bad, and I'm not saying it doesn't exist. It does exist, it is good. It just isn't something that sustains 15 companies all doing it at the same time, just one company can do that, it will take all the prizes. And that's why it's laundering, because the competition was imaginary, you might as well have gone straight to the source in the first place, and indeed, that will happen! It happens in operating systems, which encompass huge amounts of software functionality nowadays, it will happen in networking hardware.

nsteel 3y ago
What can you pick up free off the internet that will help you design, build and support https://www.nokia.com/networks/mobile-networks/reefshark/ https://www.nokia.com/networks/mobile-networks/reefshark/, https://www.nokia.com/networks/ip-networks/fpcx/ https://www.nokia.com/networks/ip-networks/fpcx/ or https://www.nokia.com/networks/technologies/fp5/ https://www.nokia.com/networks/technologies/fp5/ ? These hardware products (and their supporting software) are the foundation of what Nokia is selling. There might be Linux running on top (or on the side) of this, but that isn't really the part people are paying for.