this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2024
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GitHub Is Not Open Source, A Rant (listed.to)
submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] -5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

So, is google not a monopoly because there are other search engines out there?

It isn't. There are other search engines. People use Google because it's the best, not because it's the only one available. If Google became a horrible search engine, people would switch no problem

Does Apple not have a monopoly among US teenagers because there are Android phones available?

Yes. Although Apple is preferred in this public (of which I don't know a lot about, so I won't try to guess why), Android is always an option. And a cheaper one, usually. This forces Apple to differentiate themselves by giving the best in what their users want (premium quality and status, I guess).

Does Microsoft not have a monopoly in desktop computing because Apple and Linux exist or because phones exist?

Same point.

What is your definition of monopoly and how does Github not fit it?

A monopoly is when a company is the only one in a market niche. Not the most prominent one.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

A monopoly is when a company is the only one in a market niche. Not the most prominent one.

What would you call the latter then?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I don't think there's a precise name for that, since it can be a lot of complex things. A monopoly is a very defined thing, that was my point.

A company can be prominent because it is just better at giving what the consumers want. That's the case of Google (as a search engine). I use Duck Duck Go, but very often I have to fallback to Google because DDG's results are just not quite right.

It can be prominent because what it does is very expensive and so only a few can even try it. That's again the case with Google. Creating a good search engine is hard, and Google just got more money to throw at it. That's also the case of Apple. What they are selling (premium products with very high quality and stability) is inherently expensive, and such they don't face a lot of competition (Sansung I guess). Many big corp will lobby the government to artificially make the market more expensive so they can rule out small fish (don't quote me on that, I'll not elaborate further).

A company can also turn itself into a conglomerate, merging, buying and assimilating other companies. That's the case with AbInbev here in Brazil. They assimilated most of the beer companies. It is very hard (in my opinion impossible) for this to turn into a monopoly, because there will be other big fish trying to play the same game (Petrópolis and Heineken in this case, for example), and there will always be those companies that will not accept being bought, hoping they will be the next big fish.

I'm not making any judgement of value here, I hate big corporations, but I think we should put blame where blame is due, and not attack straw men and use water down terms, because that's pretty weak.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I don’t think there’s a precise name for that, since it can be a lot of complex things.

Do you understand now why people call it a monopoly? Why the US Department of Justice alleges Apple to be a monopoly?

There are indeed 5 characteristics for a monopoly and only one need fit the target to be called a monopoly, of which your criteria is only one:

  • Profit maximizer: monopolists will choose the price or output to maximise profits at where MC=MR.This output will be somewhere over the price range, where demand is price elastic. If the total revenue is higher than total costs, the monopolists will make abnormal profits.
  • Price maker: Decides the price of the good or product to be sold, but does so by determining the quantity in order to demand the price desired by the firm.
  • High barriers to entry: Other sellers are unable to enter the market of the monopoly.
  • Single seller: In a monopoly, there is one seller of the good, who produces all the output.[6] Therefore, the whole market is being served by a single company, and for practical purposes, the company is the same as the industry.
  • Price discrimination: A monopolist can change the price or quantity of the product. They sell higher quantities at a lower price in a very elastic market, and sell lower quantities at a higher price in a less elastic market.

Had you provided another term, I would have agreed with you that the author doesn't know what a monopoly is, but it seems like the inverse is true.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I don't like to argue semantics on the internet so I won't answer further than this

US Department of Justice alleges Apple to be a monopoly

With all due respect, I really don't care what the US government calls a monopoly. It doesn't make it a monopoly just because some county government said so.

Single seller: In a monopoly, there is one seller of the good, who produces all the output.[6] Therefore, the whole market is being served by a single company, and for practical purposes, the company is the same as the industry.

That's the most important thing. We agree on that one. A monopoly is the singular provider of a good in the market. Github is not the only provider of git hosting (think Gitlab and Bitbucket). Apple is not the singular provider of smartphones (Sansung, Motorola, Xiaomi, etc), nor it's the singular provider of laptops (Lenovo, Samsung, Alienware, Framework). All of the other points are things that monopolies do, but alone doesn't make a monopoly.

This difference is important, because creating a true monopoly is impossibly hard. So hard in fact, that they are usually caused by interference of the government (like Petrobrás here), not the other way around.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Duopoly?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Wouldn't it be when there are only 2 companies selling a product by @[email protected]'s logic? Windows for example has 71% desktop marketshare worldwide, but Apple, Linux, BSD, Redox, TempleOS, and others as "competitors". Or ~90% of all sunglasses are made by one company in Italy, but there are hundreds of copycats from China and other countries with knockoffs.

What's that called? I'm still curious about @[email protected]'s answer.

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