Rebecca Giblin on chokepoint capitalism [LWN.net]

Rebecca Giblin on chokepoint capitalism

Posted Mar 30, 2023 0:26 UTC (Thu) by ras (subscriber, #33059)
In reply to: Rebecca Giblin on chokepoint capitalism by archaic
Parent article: Rebecca Giblin on chokepoint capitalism

> political activism campaigns

I was at the talk, and yes, it was about a political activism campaign, created in response to the negative effects of a monopsony on some people. I think you are right in saying it didn't have much to do with open source directly.

But those monopsonies were made possible by advancements in the last two decades made by computers and communications (the internet), and such advancements are built largely on the back of open source plus a layer of proprietary glue and candy. I found this explanation of the left field effects on society created by what is effectively both my profession and my hobby to be both unexpected and enlightening.

But more to the point, while it is true to say it didn't have much to do with "open source" directly, if you remove just one word, "source", then what's left ("openness" or "transparency") turned out to be very relevant. The companies went to great lengths to hide what their systems/algorithms were in their proprietary software. Only when that was stripped away (by what was effectively an unintentional data leak by the companies themselves), did the politics kick in.

Effectively the companies are using the monopsonies they built to redirect money from the supplies to their shareholders. I don't want moral discussions about whether that is fair or not here. What is interesting to me is that while the large reduction in money paid to the suppliers has been self-evident for a long while, it didn't trigger much of a reaction in society as a whole. I presume that was because most assumed it was just the market being efficient or something else people found morally acceptable. It was only after a light was shone on the mechanism they were using to do the redirect that this political movement took off. Thus, the political activism we are seeing is a direct effect of "openness". I suspect that will resonate with many here, just as it did at Everything Open.

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Rebecca Giblin on chokepoint capitalism

Posted Mar 30, 2023 0:48 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (3 responses)

> I think you are right in saying it didn't have much to do with open source directly.

It may not affect open source directly, but it's very relevant indirectly.

If you look on what these companies doing while building these moats you'll see that majority of huge open source projects (Android and Chrome, Linux kernel and React and lots of other tools) are created as part of effort of building these.

And there, too, we observe similar effects: independent makers (like Firefox, e.g.) just couldn't compete.

What to do about that? Is it Ok to have just one browser because no one but some largest companies can build anything comparable (and even they need to cooperate)?

It's extremely tricky question because alternative to these open core offers would have been purely closed offerings from Microsoft and Oracle, not plethora of open-source competition!

It it bad thing? Is it good thing? I honestly don't know.

In essence Linux Kernel (as it exists today) is something these huge companies built together to ensure that none of competitions (neither large nor small) can use better OS kernel to outcompete them… but as a result they also ensured that, basically, every “mom and pop” shop can also use one of the best OS kernels… for free.

I wonder if books tries to address that part of the story. It's much less clear-cut than these attempts to rob audiobook authors from their income.

Rebecca Giblin on chokepoint capitalism

Posted Mar 30, 2023 7:20 UTC (Thu) by mfuzzey (subscriber, #57966) [Link]

>In essence Linux Kernel (as it exists today) is something these huge companies built together

Yes I think the good part of the Linux model is that while the modern Linux kernel is definitely built by corporation funded developers the corporations themselves have relatively little control over development itself. That power lies with maintainers who, while generally also corporate employees themselves, can quite easilly switch if needed.

Sure the companies get to choose which parts of the kernel the people they employ work on and will logically favour areas that are useful to them but they are not the judges of what is accepted technically so you don't get the quality / time to market compromises so frequent in proprietary software.

The Linux model has found a way of harnessing the financial resources of corporations to ensure plenty of developer time (without which it is difficult to scale beyond a few people scratching their own itch) but without handing effective control to them with all the downsides that go with that.

But, unfortunately, I don't think the model is generally applicable, it only really works for really foundational bedrock things like the kernel where companies can be convinced to cooperate rather than compete.

Rebecca Giblin on chokepoint capitalism

Posted Mar 30, 2023 13:33 UTC (Thu) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (1 responses)

> If you look on what these companies doing while building these moats you'll see that majority of huge open source projects (Android and Chrome, Linux kernel and React and lots of other tools) are created as part of effort of building these.

Actually, most of those huge open source projects are built over huge pre-existing free software components, and those megacorps are using the very same playbook described in the article to corner those too, by coopting key players, and burying the free software core bellow a layer they have total control of (typically by promoting “open source” over “free software”, “service” over “protocol”, “static builds” and “vendoring” over “dynamic substitutable linking”).

Those all make it easier to capture and control access to the “free software” stack that enabled them to build their wares.

Rebecca Giblin on chokepoint capitalism

Posted Mar 30, 2023 13:48 UTC (Thu) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]

If I may add, “static builds”, “vendoring”, “image-based” deployments are all part of an even older playbook the megacorps are all too happy to recycle. By making any replacement an all or nothing thing, that mixes open, free and closed components in an unscrutable messy blob, the bar for replacement and substitution is raised above the capabilities of most competitors.

The previous generation of software giants understood it very well, and they played the anticompetitive complexity game till they choked on needless complexity added just to corner the market, and were unseated by simpler free software alternatives.

The current generation of software giants are busy re-complexifying their solutions to lock down the market and close the free software capabilities that enabled them to rise in the first place.