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Comment by dboreham | Hacker News Reader

Rule #1: don't start a business that depends on data owned by some other business.

Rule #1-1: especially if your product adversely affects the other business.

Rule #1-2: especially if the other business is much larger than yours.

While true, is that relevant? This app is free and doesn't even have in-app purchases, so it sounds like it was just built by a person (one sufficiently human to its users that the reviews are directly written to or about "Jeff") who had some reason to care for this community and isn't a "business".

While true, is that relevant? I can easily see Apple siding with a business as large as AA over a single person trying to make a useful app for people.

If you choose a walled garden, you'll have to live at the mercy of gatekeepers.

This site is called Hacker News. This is an exemplary application of the hacker ethos - to apply skill and insight to make a digital system better for some group who is being underserved, without all-encompassing regard for the desires of the offending organization.

This is the most anti startup logic I've witnessed on here. Many startups have succeeded while violating all of these rules.

A lot of HackerNews posters are very sympathetic to the difficulties and troubles of massive billion-dollar companies.

Many have succeeded by breaking a variety of actual laws, e.g. Uber, Lyft.

Well, it's not a business, and it doesn't adversely affect the other business so this is fine. The complaint isn't really by the app developer. It's mostly that life is being made hard for the attendants through blocking the developer.

It adversely affects AA by making it more difficult to overwork their employees.

this may be true, but it's very disappointing. As BigCos keep getting bigger and owning more and more data, it is essentially a moratorium on individuals implementing good ideas that provide value to other individuals.

As citizens we should oppose this concept of data ownership; you shouldn't be able to 'own' facts that the public and your employees already reasonably have access to.

Rule #1-1 doesn't really apply though. American Airlines seems to be shooting itself in the foot by making working for them harder. This is somebody doing something for free that brings them value.

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