Uber and Lyft say they're ending services in Minneapolis over a city-mandated driver pay increase. The city council pushed through the measure to bring driver pay closer to the local minimum wage of $15.57 an hour.
I have to wonder how hard it would be to build some kind of open source platform to compete with these companies.
I’d have to imagine that the answer to that is “really damn hard”. Look at any Lemmy instance and see how hard it is just to create and maintain an open source “comment section for the internet” platform; now imagine managing thousands of financial transactions on that platform, processing background checks, establishing some sort of trust and security team, and people’s livelihoods depending on that all working reliably all the time.
There’s a reason why only VC-backed companies have managed to get off the ground in this space; it’s hella expensive for a bunch of volunteers to manage.
I’d have to imagine that the answer to that is “really damn hard”. Look at any Lemmy instance and see how hard it is just to create and maintain an open source “comment section for the internet” platform; now imagine managing thousands of financial transactions on that platform, processing background checks, establishing some sort of trust and security team, and people’s livelihoods depending on that all working reliably all the time.
There’s a reason why only VC-backed companies have managed to get off the ground in this space; it’s hella expensive for a bunch of volunteers to manage.