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Comment by karl11 | Hacker News Reader

I don't think there has ever been a company so poorly understood (willfully or otherwise) as Palantir. They make a software platform, it does not come with any data, does not come connected to any datasources, etc. You can literally sign up right now for a trial and see this for yourself. It looks the same if you were to purchase a license. This headline might as well say 'Say No to PostgreSQL' or 'Say No to Excel' or 'Say No to Salesforce', etc. Wild.

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I think when people go against palantir, they are specifically against gotham - their govt/intelligence-only product. It is true that gotham is an app built on top of foundry just like any business builds on top of foundry. But in this case since palantir itself is the one building it (and heavily marketing it may I say) they get the bad rep for it.

If XYZ Inc. built gotham with palantir supplying them foundry, palantir can claim to be "just like postgres".

This all matters only if you're actually against gotham / automated surveillance, of course, and believe that it was not happening until alex karp.

> This headline might as well say 'Say No to PostgreSQL' or 'Say No to Excel' or 'Say No to Salesforce', etc. Wild.

Wat? These are wildly different things:

> Say No to PostgreSQL

Sure, if you self-host it, this would be a stupid thing to say.

> Say No to Excel

A little worse: it's proprietary and who knows what it does and where it sends your data.

> Say No to Salesforce

Way worse: they host the data, and who knows what they do with it.

A lot of words but you could have simply searched to know that Palantir offers self hosting.

Palantir's founders and executives are aware of what their tools are designed for and what they enable, and they're proud of their role.

Salesforce, Microsoft, and PostgresSQL contributors aren't bragging about how their products enable lethal military operations.

Is their code open? Can you somehow attest that the data it ingests is fully under control of the client that uses the platform?

The comparison to PostgreSQL in particular is very poor in that regard.

You can self host it on premises. I think the comparison is fair for most of the products offered by Palantir.

Ok but then why? Or, what's your point here? Like what would explain the behavior you are noting if it really is that absurd and seemingly arbitrary? Is the implication that they just have really bad PR?

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