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Peter Thiel on what works at work

• mindslight 12y ago
  > There’s something about the software businesses built in the last 30, 40 years that works incredibly well for actually capturing value What the fucking fuck?! This must be why RMS, Linus, and everyone else who has fostered Free and Open standards have their own personal yachts. My observation has been that the value provided by a piece of software is inversely proportional to how much its creator is able to extract value. A tool that can be relied upon and built on top of is invaluable - this end of the spectrum is Free software (in the modification sense. unfortunately this seems to also imply the price sense). Meanwhile, inserting yourself as a needless middleman is exactly what allows one to set arbitrary terms to extract value from users that come to rely on you. This is why every hot new area of development is a cesspool battleground of proprietary shit - it's in no individual manufacturer's interest to support an open standard if they they think they can possibly triumph through marketing and then extract licensing fees (and these days, API access fees). Hopefully for the benefit of society, over the long term the proprietarians will continue to be reverse engineered and otherwise overthrown by the noble people working to build solid foundations that can be relied upon by everybody. I just wish the economics were lined up.