Well-researched and thought out piece. It never occurred to me that antiquity sold bread that way. With respect to SaaS, I think convenience was a lever that the FOSS community understood but never really capitalized on, since they’re busier lambasting you for using “heathen hardware” from “profit mongers.” Companies like Red Hat and Canonical picked up on the convenience aspect, with varying degrees of success, and wavering loyalty to the FOSS ideals. But I think you nailed it, to the extent that my opinion matters. I mean, I’ve been using UNIX since 1974, and Emacs since the late 80s, but I now lean hard on Apple products because my goal is to produce rare and valuable things that aren’t yet another CLI app. Well done. Keep the faith.
Software as a Service like Salesforce, Microsoft 365, or Google Workspace. Usually a web-based product. In the author world, something like Book Funnel is a SaaS.
When the value, taste, etcetera of something is sufficient, it makes sense to do it yourself. We make our own hummus and pico de gallo because the opportunity cost for us is low, my wife loves doing it, it tastes better, and it's healthier for us. We don't raise our own cows, though, because it's just simpler to buy filets from a professional butcher.
The only time most people make their own sour dough is when it's trending on TikTok. 🙄 You can tell what's trending based on what stores are briefly sold out of. Smart supermarkets don't begin stocking at the new level of heavy whipping cream consumption, because they know the surge of people making homemade ice cream based on the TikTok fad isn't sustainable.
Research suggests that a key driver of the social evolution of homo sapiens (and other colony organisms) was division of labor (DOL), despite some trade-off disadvantages, of course. I optimize my personal/social energy throughput if you grow the wheat, and you there bake the bread, and you over there deliver it to me. And meantime, I'll get someone to supply me their SaaS to free me from much of the tedium of running my enterprise.
Even in the basic stuff, software still can win. I built my own AI Chief of Staff. It was a fun experience. I edited it twice. It kinda worked. A friend got me into a beta of something 10X better that I now gladly pay for because a small team consistently focused on a specific user need and with even a few hundred users will knock the snot out of my tinkering any day of the week.
And that’s before we get to your spot-on points about security, scalability and more.
Well-researched and thought out piece. It never occurred to me that antiquity sold bread that way. With respect to SaaS, I think convenience was a lever that the FOSS community understood but never really capitalized on, since they’re busier lambasting you for using “heathen hardware” from “profit mongers.” Companies like Red Hat and Canonical picked up on the convenience aspect, with varying degrees of success, and wavering loyalty to the FOSS ideals. But I think you nailed it, to the extent that my opinion matters. I mean, I’ve been using UNIX since 1974, and Emacs since the late 80s, but I now lean hard on Apple products because my goal is to produce rare and valuable things that aren’t yet another CLI app. Well done. Keep the faith.
No clue what Saas is but I do bake sourdough bread regularly. It’s better.
Software as a Service like Salesforce, Microsoft 365, or Google Workspace. Usually a web-based product. In the author world, something like Book Funnel is a SaaS.
When the value, taste, etcetera of something is sufficient, it makes sense to do it yourself. We make our own hummus and pico de gallo because the opportunity cost for us is low, my wife loves doing it, it tastes better, and it's healthier for us. We don't raise our own cows, though, because it's just simpler to buy filets from a professional butcher.
The only time most people make their own sour dough is when it's trending on TikTok. 🙄 You can tell what's trending based on what stores are briefly sold out of. Smart supermarkets don't begin stocking at the new level of heavy whipping cream consumption, because they know the surge of people making homemade ice cream based on the TikTok fad isn't sustainable.
Yeah we do g factor in the health cost of today’s convenient bread or indeed the loss of capability as we hand over to SaaS convenience.
The problem with the Chorleywood process is the bread it makes isn't very nice.
I really appreciated this analogy.
Research suggests that a key driver of the social evolution of homo sapiens (and other colony organisms) was division of labor (DOL), despite some trade-off disadvantages, of course. I optimize my personal/social energy throughput if you grow the wheat, and you there bake the bread, and you over there deliver it to me. And meantime, I'll get someone to supply me their SaaS to free me from much of the tedium of running my enterprise.
Even in the basic stuff, software still can win. I built my own AI Chief of Staff. It was a fun experience. I edited it twice. It kinda worked. A friend got me into a beta of something 10X better that I now gladly pay for because a small team consistently focused on a specific user need and with even a few hundred users will knock the snot out of my tinkering any day of the week.
And that’s before we get to your spot-on points about security, scalability and more.