Hacker News Reader

Comment by em3rgent0rdr | Hacker News Reader

Lyft? That is just another corporate-controlled centralized system. I'd much prefer something along the lines of http://libretaxi.org/

View on HN

Libretaxi sucks. I don't want to negotiate with the driver and I don't want to pay cash. In typical fashion, open source/FS people fail to understand what makes a product popular when they try to clone it.

Nobody gives a fuck about "Libre", I just want to get a fucking ride.

That's too reactive. The point is that there may be services we want (ride) on infrastructure we can inspect and control and we might want to have respect for the operators while we're at it. I see those as features which make execution more expensive and tend to attract less investment and thus not as well done, when done by volunteers in their spare time. That is a incentive problem, not an open source problem.

It's not too reactive at all, it's precisely how I feel as well. I travel a lot in South East Asia and the absolute last thing I want is to have to bargain with the driver (100% of the time they will try to rip me off) or carry bundles of small notes at all times (100% of the time the driver will claim to have no change).

I have no idea who LibreTaxi is for, if anyone, but their marketing page makes me want to run a mile. Uber and grab have been a revelation for me in SEA and I use them exclusively.

I said "something along the lines of libretaxi". Not libretaxi. You can still do libre with a reputation system and without having to bargain for every ride.

you missed my point entirely

To be fair, it's not very "libre" either if the only phone shown on the home page is an iphone.

> No credit cards. Drivers get paid directly with cash.

I can understand why some people might see this as a feature, but that's severely misunderstanding why people use services like Uber.

Also, payment is very culturally specific.

In Brazil, Uber required drivers to accept cash payment having seen that it was successful in other countries like India. Suddenly carjackers realised that Uber cars were basically cash machines on wheels and so armed robbery, murder and mayhem ensued.

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/brazils-love-affa...

As a counterpoint, Careem, Uber's biggest competitor in the GCC, accepts cash. I love the system as they've handled it well - if the driver has no change, they just add it to your account for use on the next trip, with no pressure to tip. You can even run a negative balance although I'm not sure what the limit is.

I really want to see free/open-source win, but it won't happen as long as people keep thinking that shouting "down with closed systems" is a substitute for a competitive product. Ideological purity isn't enough.

Centralized systems have value, sometimes far more than open systems. The other way around is true also.

You can't automatically assume that closed systems are a bad thing.

    > No Credit Cards
    > Negotiating the price with a driver

No thanks!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com