[guestbest]

As an independent developer (misv) working on my projects part time out of necessity, I look forward to a tech market where well funded businesses give away their software for free until they establish a monopoly mostly disappear. I don’t think this will do it, but it helps make me think they won’t have spigots of easy money flowing in to their accounts.

[gumballindie]

This comment is underrated. Basically what these businesses do is they sell their products at a dumping cost. If that practice is illegal for physical products then so should it be for software.

[labcomputer]

Well, sure, but that’s essentially impossible to define for a product with zero marginal cost. You’d be making it illegal for a small company with x sales/year to sell for the same price as a large company with 2x sales/year.

[whack]

At a very minimum, you can make it illegal to price a product below its marginal cost. This would have prevented e-commerce/rideshare/delivery companies from using VC-funded discounts to gain market-share and destroy less-funded competitors.

[mmmmmbop]

I agree with the sentiment, but it's not correct that price dumping is illegal for physical products.

Trade treaties and WTO rules cover dumping in international trade for obvious reasons, but to my knowledge, there's no law in the major western jurisdictions covering domestic dumping.

[toast0]

Domestic dumping may be prohibited as predatory pricing under anti-trust, depending on the circumstances, including the pricer needing to have market power.

[mmmmmbop]

Right, but there is zero differentiation there between physical and virtual products. GP implied that there is some sort of protection against price dumping of physical products that doesn't exist for virtual products.

[KirillPanov]

The differentiation is in your choice of terminology. "Virtual" products have zero marginal cost, and the statute mentions marginal cost. The statute doesn't have to mention "virtual" products because it mentions marginal cost.

[btown]

https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui... notes that there are dumping restrictions, but that courts rarely find firms in violation.

Asking ChatGPT "What is the case law around single-firm predatory pricing?" provides a number of examples, including the tests used by various Western court systems. (Though do note that ChatGPT is not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice!)

[mmmmmbop]

Correct, anti-trust law can introduce a lot of rules prohibiting actions that would be fine if it weren't for the monopolistic position of the actor. But as mentioned in the other comment, there's no differentiation there between physical and virtual products.

[mrtksn]

Completely agree, I'm sick and tired of capital flooding the markets until everything else dries out so their products prevail due to the sheer reality that you can't compete against "free". At first it may seem like encouraging innovation but it ends up with stagnation once the battle over land grab is over.

[drowsspa]

I'd even say this model was a net negative for development in general. So much complexity and time wasted spread throughout the industry because of these companies with infinite money

[WJW]

Perhaps, but seeing the public outcry when docker tried to kill its free-for-open-source plan makes me think we'll see companies giving away software for quite a while.