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Marc Benioff on where big tech is headed

fortune.com

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Re: Marc Benioff on where big tech is headed

#11
post #8

"We have an industry that has a history of stinginess and that does not have a good history of giving back." That doesn't match anything I've heard or read, from what I can tell tech entrepreneurs constantly give back, or at the least consistently invest back. I'm positive this is bias, but is there another industry that creates as many investors? Either angel or future VC partners? That's not quite the right questio…

how is salesforce.com going to give back to the big data community? it's a bit like apple. there's no way to pass their "improvements" to BSD on to the BSD community even if they felt magnimonious some day... generally big tech (aside from IBM, Xerox Parc, and the OLD GUARD that actually did paid research) today are webstack leechers... maybe the VCs even try to clone techstacks from successful startups but minus tha…

So GCD, WebKit, LLVM, Clang, etc do not count? Ot just don't fit your narrative?

Re: Marc Benioff on where big tech is headed

#12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how is salesforce.com going to give back to the big data community? it's a bit like apple. there's no way to pass their "improvements" to BSD on to the BSD community even if they felt magnimonious some day... generally big tech (aside from IBM, Xerox Parc, and the OLD GUARD that actually did paid research) today are webstack leechers... maybe the VCs even try to clone techstacks from successful startups but minus tha…

So GCD, WebKit, LLVM, Clang, etc do not count? Ot just don't fit your narrative?

you have a point with LLVM (probably due to the reason you outlined)

However WebKit is steerage, in a direction of their choice.

Re: Marc Benioff on where big tech is headed

#13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how is salesforce.com going to give back to the big data community? it's a bit like apple. there's no way to pass their "improvements" to BSD on to the BSD community even if they felt magnimonious some day... generally big tech (aside from IBM, Xerox Parc, and the OLD GUARD that actually did paid research) today are webstack leechers... maybe the VCs even try to clone techstacks from successful startups but minus tha…

So GCD, WebKit, LLVM, Clang, etc do not count? Ot just don't fit your narrative?

but really, to tie it into the article in question: salesforce.com are the real ones in question. the narrative i'm spinning is that post DARPA, the "computer industry", due to funding strings, doesn't DO computer science per se, but does biased steerage, based upon where individual companies want us to go. in the case of apple, which wall are these bricks in service to? a garden wall, it appears. but you are completely correct in that there is some spillover and I exaggerate to make a point.

Re: Marc Benioff on where big tech is headed

#14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So GCD, WebKit, LLVM, Clang, etc do not count? Ot just don't fit your narrative?

you have a point with LLVM (probably due to the reason you outlined) However WebKit is steerage, in a direction of their choice.

Apple's stewardship of KHTML paved the way for Chrome/Chromium, which ran off WebKit until version 27. Enabling better browsers is a hugely valuable contribution.

Re: Marc Benioff on where big tech is headed

#17
post #8

"We have an industry that has a history of stinginess and that does not have a good history of giving back." That doesn't match anything I've heard or read, from what I can tell tech entrepreneurs constantly give back, or at the least consistently invest back. I'm positive this is bias, but is there another industry that creates as many investors? Either angel or future VC partners? That's not quite the right questio…

The first part of "giving back" is to give people a quality product in the first place that makes people's lives better.

During the financial crisis we saw a lot of shady behavior from the financial sector that might not have been illegal, but was sketchy. Having non-sketchy business practices is the first step and it is seldom talked about. However, I think that the tech sector (and I'm not in it) does a good job of providing real value for people instead of scam my products.

Re: Marc Benioff on where big tech is headed

#18
post #2

I can't help but think that people who truly feel like they have unique insight into the future would be insane to share it publicly.

Well it's altruism at work.

Also, don't forget someone else might have already noticed this same insight, so with some game theory one can easily end up sharing an insight, cancelling out their competition.

Also I think this insight has been pretty easily known for a while now.

Re: Marc Benioff on where big tech is headed

#19
post #8

"We have an industry that has a history of stinginess and that does not have a good history of giving back." That doesn't match anything I've heard or read, from what I can tell tech entrepreneurs constantly give back, or at the least consistently invest back. I'm positive this is bias, but is there another industry that creates as many investors? Either angel or future VC partners? That's not quite the right questio…

New startup companies can take the 1% pledge and give 1% of their resources to support integrating philanthropy into their business from an early stage.
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