[guardian-dev] Free Software Ride Hailing Systems?

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

The way I'm thinking about it, the "customer" would be existing taxi
companies that already have a pool of drivers and a customer base.  They
know they need to modernize to compete, so if there was a turn-key
whitelabel app or some kind of general service modeled like gitlab-ish,
those companies could just adopt it.  Then they'd pay for support and
development services as needed.  Or in the gitlab-ish model, there could
be a hosted version for a monthly fee, along side consulting services
for running your own.

.hc

Chris Kuethe:
> It's probably worth gaining familiarity with various dirty tricks the
> industry uses, as well as brainstorming active attacks on the
> platform/industry.
> 
> In particular I'm thinking of Uber's "greyballing" as well as some of the
> things the satellite TV industry has done; I can't imagine either TNC or
> taxi companies being particularly fond of yet another entrant, or worse, a
> technology suite that allows many new competitors to overcome a number of
> technology hurdles (no matter how much they profess that competition is
> good for the market). Also, getting a critical mass of drivers and riders
> is a similar problem to bootstrapping a dating site. No one is going to
> want to use the service if it's not already active in their area, and that
> makes it hard to raise funds to advertise to gain users ...
> 
> I like the idea, I don't have a good plan for building an open ride-hailing
> platform in what is sure to be a hostile environment.
> 
> On Sat, Apr 8, 2017 at 7:57 AM, Hans-Christoph Steiner <
> hans at guardianproject.info> wrote:
> 
>>
>> Its always seemed to me that building the software behind things like Uber
>> and Lyft would not be so hard. If there was a free software version, then
>> all of these taxi companies around the world would be able to compete with
>> the monopolistic Uber juggernaut. And there would be lots of opportunity to
>> make the software respect privacy.
>>
>> With Uber banned in Italy and other places, it seems like are some good
>> opportunities for this:
>> http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/D6tvS06-
>> idk/italy-bans-uber
>>
>> .hc
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> 
> 

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