5 ms·

Can't understand the reasoning behind expecting a company to pour hundreds of millions of dollars and resources into something for free / no return at all.

ZeroGravitas 12y ago
Because once you get the incentives correctly aligned it's a massive boost in global wealth?
- melling 12y ago
  But the company that invested the billions essentially gets no added value. That's not an effective business model. You are right because there would be a huge boon. This could be said for many other things too, like drug research for instance. Rather than pining over a wish, we should come up with a better open source/crowd sourcing method if we really want them.
  - zo1 12y ago
    >"Rather than pining over a wish, we should come up with a better open source/crowd sourcing method if we really want them." Here you go, one method for crowd-sourcing map data: www.openstreetmap.org
    - melling 12y ago
      I already know about that. I think you misunderstood my point. If the poster was satisfied with the current solution then he wouldn't be pining for his wish. I was addressing the generalization. People often wish that company X would donate their efforts
- zo1 12y ago
  It's easy to talk about "boosting global wealth" when it's other peoples' money.
  - rictic 12y ago
    The parent and great-grandparent haven't proposed seizing private property, they're just noticing and drawing attention to waste. The observation is that if we could align incentives such that Bing, Google, OSM, Apple, etc were all investing aggressively into the same map data then everyone would be better off. Maybe we can't! Capitalism is pretty damn good at some problems, optimal even. But it's not flawless, and it is worth noticing and thinking about places where gains appear to be possible.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > Because once you get the incentives correctly aligned it's a massive boost in global wealth? The way you get the incentives correctly aligned is to make sure that the people making the decision (i.e., the company building the service) gets reward commensurate with the social utility, such that it is in their rational self-interest to do the socially-useful thing. At which point, they are no longer doing it without compensation.
gvb 12y ago
Remember the Yellow Pages[tm]? It was a free product that made a huge amount of money by charging businesses to be included/advertised. Google Maps is the new Yellow Pages. "Let your fingers do the walking." Many GPSes have "live google" functionality. I have one that allowed me to search for the nearest gas station or restaurant while on the road. There is huge value to Google from that.
- cylinder 12y ago
  Yes, and that's all via Google Maps, not OpenStreetMaps. Just like YP didn't give away their data, you had to use YP to get it.
rakoo 12y ago
> no return at all That's where you got it all wrong; the same common sense argument could be used against using (and contributing to) open source software in companies, and yet the most successful open source softwares are supported by companies. The thing is, contrary to the common sense argument, there is value in not reinventing what others are already doing. That's also a great way to find technical talents who have first-hand knowledge of the tools you use. OSM is very similar here: the data is openly reusable by anybody and any change benefits everyone. There can be a good reason for not contributing and using OSM, and that would be because Maps is such a central product to Google that they don't want anything shared with anybody else (plus they already have a lot of data and are considered as the best in class, rightfully or not)
- ufmace 12y ago
  The trouble is that the cost/benefit tradeoff of open source vary massively between types of software and data. A few open source projects have been hugely successful, attracting contributions from many for-profit corporations. Many more are somewhere between useless and abandoned and sorta-kinda useful if you're willing to tolerate various bugs, quirks, and poor UI. The vast majority of all software written will never be open-sourced because of some combination of vertical target markets, the need to be tightly linked to other proprietary things, massive investment needed before it's usable, etc. OSM is an interesting case. I would have thought that the sheer effort required to keep map data up to date across the world would make it severely impractical to have open map data. They seem to be doing a decent job plugging away, but I don't have any data on how good they are at getting really accurate data and keeping up to date with ever-changing road conditions.
rictic 12y ago
I read the parent's post not as reasoning or arguing for a specific policy, but simply observing one of the flaws of capitalism. Capitalism is doing much better than the other existing systems at solving the massive coordination problems of a large modern society. However, we can also tell that it is imperfect and involves some clear examples of wasted effort. Noticing this waste is valuable, even if no one has a good solution at the moment to improve on the existing system. What's the alternative? Should we just assume that our current economic system has an optimal set of incentives that we could not improve upon?

ZeroGravitas 12y ago

Because once you get the incentives correctly aligned it's a massive boost in global wealth?

melling 12y ago
But the company that invested the billions essentially gets no added value. That's not an effective business model. You are right because there would be a huge boon. This could be said for many other things too, like drug research for instance. Rather than pining over a wish, we should come up with a better open source/crowd sourcing method if we really want them.
- zo1 12y ago
  >"Rather than pining over a wish, we should come up with a better open source/crowd sourcing method if we really want them." Here you go, one method for crowd-sourcing map data: www.openstreetmap.org
  - melling 12y ago
    I already know about that. I think you misunderstood my point. If the poster was satisfied with the current solution then he wouldn't be pining for his wish. I was addressing the generalization. People often wish that company X would donate their efforts
zo1 12y ago
It's easy to talk about "boosting global wealth" when it's other peoples' money.
- rictic 12y ago
  The parent and great-grandparent haven't proposed seizing private property, they're just noticing and drawing attention to waste. The observation is that if we could align incentives such that Bing, Google, OSM, Apple, etc were all investing aggressively into the same map data then everyone would be better off. Maybe we can't! Capitalism is pretty damn good at some problems, optimal even. But it's not flawless, and it is worth noticing and thinking about places where gains appear to be possible.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> Because once you get the incentives correctly aligned it's a massive boost in global wealth? The way you get the incentives correctly aligned is to make sure that the people making the decision (i.e., the company building the service) gets reward commensurate with the social utility, such that it is in their rational self-interest to do the socially-useful thing. At which point, they are no longer doing it without compensation.

gvb 12y ago

Remember the Yellow Pages[tm]? It was a free product that made a huge amount of money by charging businesses to be included/advertised. Google Maps is the new Yellow Pages. "Let your fingers do the walking." Many GPSes have "live google" functionality. I have one that allowed me to search for the nearest gas station or restaurant while on the road. There is huge value to Google from that.

cylinder 12y ago
Yes, and that's all via Google Maps, not OpenStreetMaps. Just like YP didn't give away their data, you had to use YP to get it.

rakoo 12y ago

> no return at all That's where you got it all wrong; the same common sense argument could be used against using (and contributing to) open source software in companies, and yet the most successful open source softwares are supported by companies. The thing is, contrary to the common sense argument, there is value in not reinventing what others are already doing. That's also a great way to find technical talents who have first-hand knowledge of the tools you use. OSM is very similar here: the data is openly reusable by anybody and any change benefits everyone. There can be a good reason for not contributing and using OSM, and that would be because Maps is such a central product to Google that they don't want anything shared with anybody else (plus they already have a lot of data and are considered as the best in class, rightfully or not)

ufmace 12y ago
The trouble is that the cost/benefit tradeoff of open source vary massively between types of software and data. A few open source projects have been hugely successful, attracting contributions from many for-profit corporations. Many more are somewhere between useless and abandoned and sorta-kinda useful if you're willing to tolerate various bugs, quirks, and poor UI. The vast majority of all software written will never be open-sourced because of some combination of vertical target markets, the need to be tightly linked to other proprietary things, massive investment needed before it's usable, etc. OSM is an interesting case. I would have thought that the sheer effort required to keep map data up to date across the world would make it severely impractical to have open map data. They seem to be doing a decent job plugging away, but I don't have any data on how good they are at getting really accurate data and keeping up to date with ever-changing road conditions.

rictic 12y ago

I read the parent's post not as reasoning or arguing for a specific policy, but simply observing one of the flaws of capitalism. Capitalism is doing much better than the other existing systems at solving the massive coordination problems of a large modern society. However, we can also tell that it is imperfect and involves some clear examples of wasted effort. Noticing this waste is valuable, even if no one has a good solution at the moment to improve on the existing system. What's the alternative? Should we just assume that our current economic system has an optimal set of incentives that we could not improve upon?