this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2024
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Technology

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[–] utopiah@lemmy.ml 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

You don’t know what a “monopoly” is.

Do you though? A clarification that most people miss : "In economics, a monopoly is a single seller. In law, a monopoly is a business entity that has significant market power, that is, the power to charge overly high prices, which is associated with a decrease in social surplus." (from Wikipedia) So are you 100% sure that the author was talking from an economical rather than legal viewpoint?

So sure, in theoretical economics GitHub is not a monopoly, rather it's part of an oligopoly. Yet, in law, it is in practice a monopoly. GitHub is so big that it does shape the market of collaborating on (open-source) software, even though alternatives do exist.