The Justice Department, according to the NYT, plans to file an antitrust lawsuit against RealPage, a real estate software company that gathers confidential information about occupancy and rental rates from paying subscribers. The company's algorithm suggests rental rates which are often higher than they would be in a competitive market. It seems to me that that reports like the Star report are apt to lead to inflationary collusion and price fixing. Perhaps "bugs" make for competitive markets.
Absent profitability info, the Star report cited above leads me to believe the "Your Property" is probably not charging enough.
The comparison between the Encyclopedia Brittanica and Wikipedia, is apt, but also points out the dangers of the different approaches. Getting information into the Encyclopedia Brittanica required a certain amount of research and providence, you had to be able to show that you had done the due diligence and that your information was as accurate as you could make it, given the availability of data in the day and age. While generally regarded as a good source of information, Wikipedia is based on majority rule, and not on fact. There are several, well documented, cases of information on Wikipedia being materially incorrect, provably so, but if the majority on Wikipedia doesn't agree with the minority, the misinformation stays, and is presented as fact. Closed Source vs Open Source faces this exact dilemma. Just because lots of people say or do a thing, doesn't always make it the correct thing.
Thank you Ben for both reading and chiming in. I agree there's a lot of potential for downside. I am by no means an expert on Open Source but what struck me as very relevant to the challenges we face in restaurants has to do with transparency and openness around "bugs". I didn't get into it in this short piece but I'm also fascinated by how the concept of composability could apply to restaurants operations and best practices.
Yeah, the part about bugs is interesting. As someone who started their career in software two decades ago as a dedicated QC tester, finding and dealing with bugs holds a special place in my heart. Over the years I've seen a marked shift away from having highly trained and dedicated QC resources toward having software engineers provide their own unit testing, before shipping code. Many organizations have determined that dedicated QC resources are too costly, but what they are missing is that QC often has additional context that the engineers miss and therefore will not only call out bugs, but also poorly designed features and bad experiences. This is something that automated quality tools and unit testing cannot find, because those tools, by design, are only able to test against a positive set of scenarios and lack broader context. I agree that with open source, comes more eyes and more use cases, leading to greater context and long-term improvements both design and functionality.
The Justice Department, according to the NYT, plans to file an antitrust lawsuit against RealPage, a real estate software company that gathers confidential information about occupancy and rental rates from paying subscribers. The company's algorithm suggests rental rates which are often higher than they would be in a competitive market. It seems to me that that reports like the Star report are apt to lead to inflationary collusion and price fixing. Perhaps "bugs" make for competitive markets.
Absent profitability info, the Star report cited above leads me to believe the "Your Property" is probably not charging enough.
The comparison between the Encyclopedia Brittanica and Wikipedia, is apt, but also points out the dangers of the different approaches. Getting information into the Encyclopedia Brittanica required a certain amount of research and providence, you had to be able to show that you had done the due diligence and that your information was as accurate as you could make it, given the availability of data in the day and age. While generally regarded as a good source of information, Wikipedia is based on majority rule, and not on fact. There are several, well documented, cases of information on Wikipedia being materially incorrect, provably so, but if the majority on Wikipedia doesn't agree with the minority, the misinformation stays, and is presented as fact. Closed Source vs Open Source faces this exact dilemma. Just because lots of people say or do a thing, doesn't always make it the correct thing.
Thank you Ben for both reading and chiming in. I agree there's a lot of potential for downside. I am by no means an expert on Open Source but what struck me as very relevant to the challenges we face in restaurants has to do with transparency and openness around "bugs". I didn't get into it in this short piece but I'm also fascinated by how the concept of composability could apply to restaurants operations and best practices.
Yeah, the part about bugs is interesting. As someone who started their career in software two decades ago as a dedicated QC tester, finding and dealing with bugs holds a special place in my heart. Over the years I've seen a marked shift away from having highly trained and dedicated QC resources toward having software engineers provide their own unit testing, before shipping code. Many organizations have determined that dedicated QC resources are too costly, but what they are missing is that QC often has additional context that the engineers miss and therefore will not only call out bugs, but also poorly designed features and bad experiences. This is something that automated quality tools and unit testing cannot find, because those tools, by design, are only able to test against a positive set of scenarios and lack broader context. I agree that with open source, comes more eyes and more use cases, leading to greater context and long-term improvements both design and functionality.