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Comment by iamsalman | Hacker News Reader

Once a startup is beyond the "critical mass" of users, it goes on to erect barriers to entry for new comers. But since it's a free market (sort of), competitors are equally welcome to get in and take their share of the pie. But having OpenSource build web apps (products) would actually blur the difference b/w a commercial entity and an open source project.

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In a truly competitive market, at some stage government would step in and break monopolies. For instance, they would go to Ebay and say, "look, you need to pool all your auction listings with other online auction companies, so they have access to yours and you display theirs", forcing them to actually compete on price and service.

And wikipedia is a non-commercial web app. There isn't really a blurred line - either it is for the common good or it is for profit.

So you're arguing that once a startup is beyond a certain number of users (considered a success), it should share that with it's competitors because that would just be fair? I know it's a bit cold but it was because of the competitive nature of the market in the first place that the said startup was able to disrupt a space. Taxi companies have been in existence for way too long. Realtors & brokers have been around since humans started building houses. Startups disrupt existing spaces, creating new business models only to grow big and then get disrupted by another startup. No startup grows to be big and remain big for eternity.

But yes, there should be a check on the type of barriers these fast growing startups erect to discourage new startups from disrupting them.

You really think the government should force eBay to give their crown jewels to their competitors?

You know a company is made of people right?

Look, you can always foster competition in an industry. But I would personally stop short of enslaving people to produce a product for their competitors.

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