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In a universe where the French government drops a perfect replacement for Notion and causes Notion to go out of business, this is still a net positive for socie

by rtpg 2y ago

In a universe where the French government drops a perfect replacement for Notion and causes Notion to go out of business, this is still a net positive for society in the same way that things like Linux existing is a net positive for society. One should not focus on the economic sphere as the be all and end all. We can just have improvements be distributed to everyone sometimes! We can just do good things through coordinated efforts and entirely sidestep the economy to get the good things. All the people who were working on Notion now can go get some on the job training to learn to farm. Why don't we just do this for everything? You can go read a bunch of political and economic philosophy about that.

coliveira 2y ago
[flagged]
- chuckadams 2y ago
  The annoying thing about pure ideologies is that they're unattainable. This turns out to be convenient for ideologues though, who insist we just have to clap louder.
DeathArrow 2y ago
[flagged]
- tough 2y ago
  Do we have a tally of communist vs capitalist millions of victims I feel like we never had 'real' communism, as much as we never had real 'free markets' yet but that's just a vibe
  - sMarsIntruder 2y ago
    Well there are/were many ‘real’ communism implementations of closed societies. While you’re right that there are no ‘free markets’ experiments, just some bad Crony Capitalism.
    - scarecrowbob 2y ago
      How many of those "closed societies" were implemented as such because of direct actions by the US and other larger powers? Cuba, Guatamala, Vietnam, and North Korea all seem to have been led by people who were very sympathetic to "open-ness" until the CIA got involved.
- weakfish 2y ago
  I think there’s probably at least 100 missing steps between producing open source applications and communism
  - omnimus 2y ago
    Can they be automated with AI?
- rlnvlc 2y ago
  Who said that government cannot compete with private companies on the free market? It is not like they banned notion, they simply released an alternative product. More competition means better outcome for the customers. But somehow you ended up saying this is communism. How you got there is completely beyond me.
  - happyopossum 2y ago
    > compete with private companies on the free market It’s not a free market as soon as Gov’t start using text dollars. It’s also. It competition when one entity has zero risk and endless capital to spend on a project. If a corporation did this, they’d be accused of being anti-competitive, not fostering competition.
    - HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
      Zero risk and endless capital is a more accurate description of VC than public works. No one gets voted out for investing in useless apps.
- coffeefirst 2y ago
  On the other hand, government run service has worked on pretty well for the mail and it did not lead to communism.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
jdvh 2y ago
In the short term a free open source govt alternative may be a net positive for society. I don't think it is in the long run. Government projects like these are not likely to really push the state-of-the-art forward. This project even advertises itself as a FOSS Notion alternative. Do government-sponsored clones encourage or stymie innovation? I think the latter. Every week we read in the news that the EU struggles with entrepreneurship. That our tech industry is languishing. That the EU gets out-competed by the US on software and by China on everything else. Europe should be making industry-leading apps. Europe should produce software startups that make products that get used worldwide. EU subsidized clones of popular American products feels like admitting defeat. I'm obviously biased because I'm also working on a product in this space. But if Notion developers must become farmers because innovation no longer pays that is a loss to the world in my book.
- mikae1 2y ago
  > Europe should be making industry-leading apps. Europe should produce software startups that make products that get used worldwide. I've kind of lost hope when it comes to commercial services and proprietary apps. They're sadly all sooner or later enshittified. We need something different, not by promises but by design (FOSS). > EU subsidized clones of popular American products feels like admitting defeat. I think it's a fresh and needed take on the financing of our common digital infra.
  - jdvh 2y ago
    I think the main problem is lock-in. If you can't get your data out you can't leave. This is true for open source and for commercial products alike. If you own your data and if you have the option to self-host you can always opt out of updates you don't like.
  - bluedino 2y ago
    I can't think of too many apps that I use that are truly FOSS. Databases, compilers/interpreters, web servers, operating systems...but apps? (Other than gnu/bad command line tools of course)
slevis 2y ago
> All the people who were working on Notion now can go get some on the job training to learn to farm. This would only work if the government replacement would be more efficient than Notion (in the sense that the French government employs less people for a product of the same quality).
- rtpg 2y ago
  This one felt obvious, but it feels a bit hard to reason on. How many sales people does this project need? It’s not zero because grants etc but let’s not kid ourselves. I think this project will never spend as much money as notion on devs. Like ever. I will grant that there’s a good idea around “well notion was doing operations for everyone at once so people don’t need as many tech/ops people ”. I’m hopeful that hosted variants pop up to help with this. I’m also hopeful that we can figure out how to make stuff easier to host when high availability is not a requirement. So maybe we end up net more operators, and less sales people and devs. That’s kind of interesting!
  - slevis 2y ago
    If it feels hard to reason on, it might be a hint... Sales people provide value. Maybe a sales person would have told this project to focus on being an alternative to Notion or Google Docs, as they are different apps/use cases. The only reason why they might need less developers is because they are a copying an existing product, so less R&D. There is no reason to assume that the teams behind Notion, Outline, Google Docs ... are less effective than the French Government.
Lutger 2y ago
Agree, but rather than farming, I think it will enable developers to focus on more complex and interesting problems. Or spot a need in the market (doesn't have to be complex) and quickly solve new problems people are willing to pay money for. Outcompeting only works if a software company is truly unable to pivot or outperform open source tools sponsored by the government. The same thing can be said by free tools given away by big tech, like vscode. Here, microsoft operates actually quite similar to the government. There is no way a new company can create a competitor to vscode and charge money for it anymore. This pushes people to solve other software problems, rather than doing something else entirely. I don't think we'll be at the limit of economic value we can generate by writing new software just yet, if such a thing even exists.

by rtpg 2y ago

coliveira 2y ago

[flagged]

chuckadams 2y ago
The annoying thing about pure ideologies is that they're unattainable. This turns out to be convenient for ideologues though, who insist we just have to clap louder.

DeathArrow 2y ago

[flagged]

tough 2y ago
Do we have a tally of communist vs capitalist millions of victims I feel like we never had 'real' communism, as much as we never had real 'free markets' yet but that's just a vibe
- sMarsIntruder 2y ago
  Well there are/were many ‘real’ communism implementations of closed societies. While you’re right that there are no ‘free markets’ experiments, just some bad Crony Capitalism.
  - scarecrowbob 2y ago
    How many of those "closed societies" were implemented as such because of direct actions by the US and other larger powers? Cuba, Guatamala, Vietnam, and North Korea all seem to have been led by people who were very sympathetic to "open-ness" until the CIA got involved.
weakfish 2y ago
I think there’s probably at least 100 missing steps between producing open source applications and communism
- omnimus 2y ago
  Can they be automated with AI?
rlnvlc 2y ago
Who said that government cannot compete with private companies on the free market? It is not like they banned notion, they simply released an alternative product. More competition means better outcome for the customers. But somehow you ended up saying this is communism. How you got there is completely beyond me.
- happyopossum 2y ago
  > compete with private companies on the free market It’s not a free market as soon as Gov’t start using text dollars. It’s also. It competition when one entity has zero risk and endless capital to spend on a project. If a corporation did this, they’d be accused of being anti-competitive, not fostering competition.
  - HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
    Zero risk and endless capital is a more accurate description of VC than public works. No one gets voted out for investing in useless apps.
coffeefirst 2y ago
On the other hand, government run service has worked on pretty well for the mail and it did not lead to communism.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

jdvh 2y ago

In the short term a free open source govt alternative may be a net positive for society. I don't think it is in the long run. Government projects like these are not likely to really push the state-of-the-art forward. This project even advertises itself as a FOSS Notion alternative. Do government-sponsored clones encourage or stymie innovation? I think the latter. Every week we read in the news that the EU struggles with entrepreneurship. That our tech industry is languishing. That the EU gets out-competed by the US on software and by China on everything else. Europe should be making industry-leading apps. Europe should produce software startups that make products that get used worldwide. EU subsidized clones of popular American products feels like admitting defeat. I'm obviously biased because I'm also working on a product in this space. But if Notion developers must become farmers because innovation no longer pays that is a loss to the world in my book.

mikae1 2y ago
> Europe should be making industry-leading apps. Europe should produce software startups that make products that get used worldwide. I've kind of lost hope when it comes to commercial services and proprietary apps. They're sadly all sooner or later enshittified. We need something different, not by promises but by design (FOSS). > EU subsidized clones of popular American products feels like admitting defeat. I think it's a fresh and needed take on the financing of our common digital infra.
- jdvh 2y ago
  I think the main problem is lock-in. If you can't get your data out you can't leave. This is true for open source and for commercial products alike. If you own your data and if you have the option to self-host you can always opt out of updates you don't like.
- bluedino 2y ago
  I can't think of too many apps that I use that are truly FOSS. Databases, compilers/interpreters, web servers, operating systems...but apps? (Other than gnu/bad command line tools of course)

slevis 2y ago

> All the people who were working on Notion now can go get some on the job training to learn to farm. This would only work if the government replacement would be more efficient than Notion (in the sense that the French government employs less people for a product of the same quality).

rtpg 2y ago
This one felt obvious, but it feels a bit hard to reason on. How many sales people does this project need? It’s not zero because grants etc but let’s not kid ourselves. I think this project will never spend as much money as notion on devs. Like ever. I will grant that there’s a good idea around “well notion was doing operations for everyone at once so people don’t need as many tech/ops people ”. I’m hopeful that hosted variants pop up to help with this. I’m also hopeful that we can figure out how to make stuff easier to host when high availability is not a requirement. So maybe we end up net more operators, and less sales people and devs. That’s kind of interesting!
- slevis 2y ago
  If it feels hard to reason on, it might be a hint... Sales people provide value. Maybe a sales person would have told this project to focus on being an alternative to Notion or Google Docs, as they are different apps/use cases. The only reason why they might need less developers is because they are a copying an existing product, so less R&D. There is no reason to assume that the teams behind Notion, Outline, Google Docs ... are less effective than the French Government.

Lutger 2y ago

Agree, but rather than farming, I think it will enable developers to focus on more complex and interesting problems. Or spot a need in the market (doesn't have to be complex) and quickly solve new problems people are willing to pay money for. Outcompeting only works if a software company is truly unable to pivot or outperform open source tools sponsored by the government. The same thing can be said by free tools given away by big tech, like vscode. Here, microsoft operates actually quite similar to the government. There is no way a new company can create a competitor to vscode and charge money for it anymore. This pushes people to solve other software problems, rather than doing something else entirely. I don't think we'll be at the limit of economic value we can generate by writing new software just yet, if such a thing even exists.