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Ah, the Overleaf model. Am I crazy to think there should be some way to stop this? It's utterly anticompetitive, but ai don't know any country where they bothe
by Y_Y 7mo ago
Ah, the Overleaf model.
Am I crazy to think there should be some way to stop this? It's utterly anticompetitive, but ai don't know any country where they bother trying to stop a small company buying/killing its competitors.
- okamiueru 7mo agoSeems like open source is the way to defeat this. Anyone can easily create a competing service, which they then have to buy out, but the cost of setting up a new one is minimal. Interesting business model that feeds on anti-competitive businesses.
- c7b 7mo agoInterestingly, Overleaf is open source [0], although I can't speak to how well the open source version works. [0] https://github.com/overleaf/overleaf https://github.com/overleaf/overleaf
- nbernard 7mo agoIIRC, it is nerfed out. It is more open core than actual open source, and the paywalled features of the online version are missing.
- vidarh 7mo agoYou'd think this should encourage people to build carbon-copies of the tools that have been bought out in the hope of being bought out... It's only a sustainable model if it's fringe enough and with low enough purchase amounts to not eventually become an exit strategy for people who might not even have tried otherwise.
- crypto137 7mo agoI mean there is a solution to this "Can I buy your company?" "No."
- MengerSponge 7mo agoThe competition to Overleaf is just running LaTeX locally, which costs approximately zero dollars and it's faster! But it's a little less convenient for a solo author, and a lot less convenient for a collaboration.
- akd 7mo agoI'm guessing that if you just uploaded a few pages of handwritten text to ChatGPT and asked it to make a font of your handwriting it would do a passably decent job. That might be the way that this business model ends.