[schalab]

Just make the whole service distributed. Cut out Uber. Connect me directly to a driver through open source software.

Person A exists who is willing to drive from point a to point b for x price. I am willing to pay x price. An open source software exists to connect us both in real time.

Who will the government regulate in this scenario?

[8jy89hui]

I think that you’re underestimating just how much infrastructure goes into running something like Uber. A friend of mine does ML work at Grab (South East asia ride hailing company) and the amount of data processing that goes into getting a good fast and cheap ride is incredible.

It might be possible to somehow distribute it and pay people at home for spare compute time, but it would still run into latency and spike problems.

[ryanbrunner]

If this existed, there would be a much stronger case for the drivers being independent contractors. Uber employees are employees specifically because Uber dictates most aspects surrounding their work outside of their hours.

[paxys]

Putting aside open vs closed source, what is the difference between Uber and the new service you are describing?

[staticautomatic]

Then you’ll be limos.com in real time.

[apta]

And this magical "open source software" will come into existence on its own, and not cost anything to maintain or run I presume eh?