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> If you can't responsibly operate a business past a certain scale, you shouldn't be allowed to continue growth. I don't know what that looks like, legally spea

> If you can't responsibly operate a business past a certain scale, you shouldn't be allowed to continue growth. I don't know what that looks like, legally speaking A legal solution is not the correct solution to that problem. The classic answer to this question in Western societies is that the market will produce a better alternative. For what it's worth, I'm typing this on my Debian desktop. In my opinion, a far better solution.

9dev 1y ago
That’s a non-answer. The market very obviously did not produce a better alternative, and we’ve been playing this game for enough decades now to be reasonably confident it won’t—and if it will, Microsoft or some other megacorp will buy them, gut them, and carry on. Regulation is the proper tool to force corporations to behave in a way that isn’t as harmful to society. This is something that should be regulated. > For what it's worth, I'm typing this on my Debian desktop. In my opinion, a far better solution. It’s almost comical how you speak about better alternatives in the context of capitalist markets, where better means reaching a higher market saturation, and then offer a niche solution that has a number of users so tiny that it’s less than a rounding error in any statistic.
- bigyabai 1y ago
  This comment is almost unfathomable in a world where Windows and MacOS combined has a smaller install-base than Linux. The capitalists already chose their winners, they just never let down a rope to the consumer market.
  - dotancohen 1y ago
    Are you referring to Android?
    - rpdillon 1y ago
      I think he's referring to the fact that, while everyone jokes about "year of Linux on the desktop": In the last 30 years, we moved overwhelmingly from local workloads to internet workloads We moved overwhelmingly away from desktop and to mobile Android is the dominant mobile OS, and it's hand-in-hand with Linux at the kernel level The internet, meanwhile, is powered overwhelmingly by Linux So I tend to agree that just because normal folks think of "computing" as the Windows or Mac machine sitting in front of them, the world is now predominantly powered by Linux.
      - 1718627440 1y ago
        ... GNU/Linux smth. ...
        rpdillon 1y ago
        I generally appreciate the distinction, but I purposely did not use that distinction here because Android is only Linux if you don't include GNU.
        1718627440 1y ago
        The distinction is relevant here, because "year of Linux on the desktop" doesn't refer to Android. The philosophy of "Linux" is that the user has control. That applies more to BSD than Android. Also it's "on the desktop".
        rpdillon 1y ago
        I fear we're talking past one another.
        1718627440 1y ago
        Oh sorry is it correct that you meant, that the "year of Linux on the desktop" doesn't matter anymore, because computing switched to mobile and servers and there the Linux kernel is dominating, while I understood that you mean that Android counts toward the "year of Linux on the desktop"?
  - rpdillon 1y ago
    > they just never let down a rope to the consumer market So this is a coded statement that I fear most people won't get, but it's pretty profound. If I'm getting bigyabai's point, they are saying that people that are professionals at choosing operating systems have overwhelmingly chosen Linux, and it's really in the consumer markets, where folks don't have any special knowledge or judgment, that Windows and MacOS thrive. That's a good insight, because it's completely true. Both Windows and MacOS cater to audiences that, for the most part, don't care or want to care about how technology works, and this makes them vulnerable. Apple and Microsoft capitalize on this.
  - 9dev 1y ago
    Your answer, and GP's reference to Debian, is highlighting the misunderstanding very precisely: Microsoft is not just an operating system vendor. If they stopped making Windows tomorrow, Microsoft would still exist and do well economically, because it's a hydra with a thousand heads. Hence my point: The classical concept of "displacement" doesn't apply to corporations at that scale anymore.
    - DoesntMatter22 1y ago
      Apple was a relativly small company on the verge of death and came all the way back to surpass Microsoft.
      - 9dev 1y ago
        Indeed it did. Thirty years ago, when the world wasn't utterly dominated by giant tech companies like it is now. Back then Microsoft wasn't capable of buying a country if they so desired; they couldn't hold most world governments hostage, didn't have a product portfolio that covers almost any organisation globally, and didn't have a trove of petabytes (more?) of data to train artificial intelligence with. The world is a different place now, and old rules don't apply anymore.
        DoesntMatter22 1y ago
        I actually think Microsoft was much more dominant in the 90s. There really weren't solid alternatives to Windows and that was their Cash cow. Now there's tons of alternatives to virtually everything they do
- baxtr 1y ago
  The market has created many better alternatives. The iPhone would have not been possible without MS being so ignorant about customers.
- dotancohen 1y ago
  > better means reaching a higher market saturation That most certainly is not my definition of better. My definition of better is addressing my needs as a user.
  - 9dev 1y ago
    You conveniently left out in the context of capitalist markets in your quote. The grandparent argued that legal solutions couldn't solve the problem, but the market could by producing a better solution. If that better solution doesn't displace the incumbent, it is by definition not a better solution, because that would—in the context of this question—imply displacing it, hence the market would have solved the problem. So whether Debian is addressing your needs better than Windows bears little relevance for the topic at hand.
    - dotancohen 1y ago
      I quoted as much as I thought necessary to make clear which part of your comment I am referring to. In any case, I think that the term "better" applies for each consumer, therefore the better solution for any specific consumer does not necessarily have to displace the incumbent.
colpabar 1y ago
There's another post on hn about how 19% of california homes are owned by investors, and when I saw that I thought to myself "wow, the free market really produced an optimal outcome there."
- brobdingnagians 1y ago
  California housing market is not an example of a free market.
- DoesntMatter22 1y ago
  In a truly free market even in California real estate would be pretty affordable. It's not affordable because there's so many laws that have been passed by people who are trying to protect the culture and value of their area. Like San Francisco, it's nearly impossible to build anything there.
observationist 1y ago
The market has failed. It's allowed massive monopolistic and anti-competitive scenarios to play out, and technology outran legislation like crazy. There are billions of people who are a victim of the failure mode I pointed out. You using an alternative (and being here, on this forum) singles you out as one of one in tens of millions of people with the capacity and knowledge to accomplish that. 25 years ago it made sense to let things play out. Now we're looking at ownership by subscription, and people unable to actually own their own devices, with constant, ubiquitous, global surveillance for all but the most wealthy, and even them most of the time. We see a proliferation of some of the worst possible things online, and companies that are unable and unwilling to effectively moderate their billions of users with resorting to heavy handed authoritarian tactics. Tactics which, when recognized by those in power, are quickly taken over and utilized for purposes far beyond anything so prosaic as "protecting children" or "combating terrorism." Apple and Microsoft and Google and the rest have shown us that the tech market is more or less just like the old steel and oil markets - robber barons rush in, coordinate, distill the market to a handful of effective players, capture regulation and lobby legislation to maximize their own profit, and there is no concomitant return of value to the users or the market in general. If you're too big to run the business responsibly, you should be legally prohibited from expanding further. This is about as pro-market as you can get, it requires actual unmet needs in any market to be met, and holds those operating in the market to account for their behavior.
- kulahan 1y ago
  This failure is primarily due to regulatory capture, rather than a failed free market approach, for what it’s worth.
  - bigyabai 1y ago
    You're going to need some actual citations for that narrative before anyone buys into it. The US refused serious regulation out of fear of stifling a fully-financialized economy. Now that America has no manufacturing capacity and a weak grasp on raw materials, our only lucrative businesses embrace exploitative subscription services, lock-in and planned obsolescence. Every economist in the US could have surmised that this would be an issue following the aforementioned oil/steel rackets. It just switched from the secondary sector to the tertiary sector of the economy.
integralid 1y ago
The solution to bad client support channels is... using open source software with no support? I don't think this works at all.
- 1718627440 1y ago
  > open source software with no support Open source means you have as much support as you like to have, because you are the support.

9dev 1y ago

That’s a non-answer. The market very obviously did not produce a better alternative, and we’ve been playing this game for enough decades now to be reasonably confident it won’t—and if it will, Microsoft or some other megacorp will buy them, gut them, and carry on. Regulation is the proper tool to force corporations to behave in a way that isn’t as harmful to society. This is something that should be regulated. > For what it's worth, I'm typing this on my Debian desktop. In my opinion, a far better solution. It’s almost comical how you speak about better alternatives in the context of capitalist markets, where better means reaching a higher market saturation, and then offer a niche solution that has a number of users so tiny that it’s less than a rounding error in any statistic.

bigyabai 1y ago
This comment is almost unfathomable in a world where Windows and MacOS combined has a smaller install-base than Linux. The capitalists already chose their winners, they just never let down a rope to the consumer market.
- dotancohen 1y ago
  Are you referring to Android?
  - rpdillon 1y ago
    I think he's referring to the fact that, while everyone jokes about "year of Linux on the desktop": In the last 30 years, we moved overwhelmingly from local workloads to internet workloads We moved overwhelmingly away from desktop and to mobile Android is the dominant mobile OS, and it's hand-in-hand with Linux at the kernel level The internet, meanwhile, is powered overwhelmingly by Linux So I tend to agree that just because normal folks think of "computing" as the Windows or Mac machine sitting in front of them, the world is now predominantly powered by Linux.
    - 1718627440 1y ago
      ... GNU/Linux smth. ...
      - rpdillon 1y ago
        I generally appreciate the distinction, but I purposely did not use that distinction here because Android is only Linux if you don't include GNU.
        1718627440 1y ago
        The distinction is relevant here, because "year of Linux on the desktop" doesn't refer to Android. The philosophy of "Linux" is that the user has control. That applies more to BSD than Android. Also it's "on the desktop".
        rpdillon 1y ago
        I fear we're talking past one another.
        1718627440 1y ago
        Oh sorry is it correct that you meant, that the "year of Linux on the desktop" doesn't matter anymore, because computing switched to mobile and servers and there the Linux kernel is dominating, while I understood that you mean that Android counts toward the "year of Linux on the desktop"?
- rpdillon 1y ago
  > they just never let down a rope to the consumer market So this is a coded statement that I fear most people won't get, but it's pretty profound. If I'm getting bigyabai's point, they are saying that people that are professionals at choosing operating systems have overwhelmingly chosen Linux, and it's really in the consumer markets, where folks don't have any special knowledge or judgment, that Windows and MacOS thrive. That's a good insight, because it's completely true. Both Windows and MacOS cater to audiences that, for the most part, don't care or want to care about how technology works, and this makes them vulnerable. Apple and Microsoft capitalize on this.
- 9dev 1y ago
  Your answer, and GP's reference to Debian, is highlighting the misunderstanding very precisely: Microsoft is not just an operating system vendor. If they stopped making Windows tomorrow, Microsoft would still exist and do well economically, because it's a hydra with a thousand heads. Hence my point: The classical concept of "displacement" doesn't apply to corporations at that scale anymore.
  - DoesntMatter22 1y ago
    Apple was a relativly small company on the verge of death and came all the way back to surpass Microsoft.
    - 9dev 1y ago
      Indeed it did. Thirty years ago, when the world wasn't utterly dominated by giant tech companies like it is now. Back then Microsoft wasn't capable of buying a country if they so desired; they couldn't hold most world governments hostage, didn't have a product portfolio that covers almost any organisation globally, and didn't have a trove of petabytes (more?) of data to train artificial intelligence with. The world is a different place now, and old rules don't apply anymore.
      - DoesntMatter22 1y ago
        I actually think Microsoft was much more dominant in the 90s. There really weren't solid alternatives to Windows and that was their Cash cow. Now there's tons of alternatives to virtually everything they do
baxtr 1y ago
The market has created many better alternatives. The iPhone would have not been possible without MS being so ignorant about customers.
dotancohen 1y ago
> better means reaching a higher market saturation That most certainly is not my definition of better. My definition of better is addressing my needs as a user.
- 9dev 1y ago
  You conveniently left out in the context of capitalist markets in your quote. The grandparent argued that legal solutions couldn't solve the problem, but the market could by producing a better solution. If that better solution doesn't displace the incumbent, it is by definition not a better solution, because that would—in the context of this question—imply displacing it, hence the market would have solved the problem. So whether Debian is addressing your needs better than Windows bears little relevance for the topic at hand.
  - dotancohen 1y ago
    I quoted as much as I thought necessary to make clear which part of your comment I am referring to. In any case, I think that the term "better" applies for each consumer, therefore the better solution for any specific consumer does not necessarily have to displace the incumbent.

colpabar 1y ago

There's another post on hn about how 19% of california homes are owned by investors, and when I saw that I thought to myself "wow, the free market really produced an optimal outcome there."

brobdingnagians 1y ago
California housing market is not an example of a free market.
DoesntMatter22 1y ago
In a truly free market even in California real estate would be pretty affordable. It's not affordable because there's so many laws that have been passed by people who are trying to protect the culture and value of their area. Like San Francisco, it's nearly impossible to build anything there.

observationist 1y ago

The market has failed. It's allowed massive monopolistic and anti-competitive scenarios to play out, and technology outran legislation like crazy. There are billions of people who are a victim of the failure mode I pointed out. You using an alternative (and being here, on this forum) singles you out as one of one in tens of millions of people with the capacity and knowledge to accomplish that. 25 years ago it made sense to let things play out. Now we're looking at ownership by subscription, and people unable to actually own their own devices, with constant, ubiquitous, global surveillance for all but the most wealthy, and even them most of the time. We see a proliferation of some of the worst possible things online, and companies that are unable and unwilling to effectively moderate their billions of users with resorting to heavy handed authoritarian tactics. Tactics which, when recognized by those in power, are quickly taken over and utilized for purposes far beyond anything so prosaic as "protecting children" or "combating terrorism." Apple and Microsoft and Google and the rest have shown us that the tech market is more or less just like the old steel and oil markets - robber barons rush in, coordinate, distill the market to a handful of effective players, capture regulation and lobby legislation to maximize their own profit, and there is no concomitant return of value to the users or the market in general. If you're too big to run the business responsibly, you should be legally prohibited from expanding further. This is about as pro-market as you can get, it requires actual unmet needs in any market to be met, and holds those operating in the market to account for their behavior.

kulahan 1y ago
This failure is primarily due to regulatory capture, rather than a failed free market approach, for what it’s worth.
- bigyabai 1y ago
  You're going to need some actual citations for that narrative before anyone buys into it. The US refused serious regulation out of fear of stifling a fully-financialized economy. Now that America has no manufacturing capacity and a weak grasp on raw materials, our only lucrative businesses embrace exploitative subscription services, lock-in and planned obsolescence. Every economist in the US could have surmised that this would be an issue following the aforementioned oil/steel rackets. It just switched from the secondary sector to the tertiary sector of the economy.

integralid 1y ago

The solution to bad client support channels is... using open source software with no support? I don't think this works at all.

1718627440 1y ago
> open source software with no support Open source means you have as much support as you like to have, because you are the support.