"We’ve been working with them for a few weeks now and we couldn’t be more thrilled with the partnership."
Thrilled? I guess money is thrilling.
"The data & reporting interfaces will be used across Monsanto and should be instrumental in the making of key business decisions."
Key business decisions like which small farmer to sue into oblivion? Or what third world nation's crops to take financially hostage? Thrilling work guys. Really.
It's an unfortunate sign for HN when the top comment on a thread is such a content-free rant.
If the rule is, if x sells something to Monsanto, fuck x, then what you're saying is fuck the entire corporate world, because I'm sure Monsanto buys Apple computers and Chevrolets and Clorox too. It's sort of ridiculous to hold Cloudant to a standard that essentially zero other companies meet.
There are frequently inane comments of this type at the bottom of HN threads. What's alarming is to see them at the top.
It is one of those companies, that is pretty well documented. From what I've read, Monsanto makes Walmart (and some others) look like angels. Just google for farmers committing suicide in India (especially from Andhra Pradesh). I also read an article about them threatening American farmers, can't remember where. I don't have any experience with them, but from what I've read about them, they seem very very very scary.
I think if I wanted to round out the mix I would add in
BP
Halliburton
Xe Services (Blackwater Worldwide)
The creation of roundup resistent crops is possibly the worst mistakes that the human race has ever made. It took what 3-5 years to make roundup impervious parasites?
Terminator seeds that can't actually create a viable organism? You have to go back to the source (Monsanto) every year.
Mono-cultures and engineered genetic pollution. Monsanto shouldn't exist.
+1! If you want to learn more about this watch Food Inc. available on NetFlix streaming. If you have high blood pressure you may want to skip the part where an Indiana man explains how he was sued by Monsanto for inducing farmers to violate patents by seed cleaning - a practice utilized by farmers for thousands of years.
I hate Monsanto, although I don't know if I would blame Cloudant for attracting such a large business.
For those not in the know, part of Monsanto's business plan includes creating patented seeds that are genetically altered and "Roundup-ready" so they can be doused with their other business, pesticides.
They also aggressively enforce their seed patents by suing local farmers that have their land contaminated, by no fault of their own, by other farms that may use these "Round-Up ready" seeds. I believe Monsanto has also now developed crops that do not create seeds and/or create seeds DOA.
I don't think this article is as damning as many of the commenters seem to think.
- The section addressing the lawsuits includes a lot of "farmers say this" type statements. It's not very long on facts. It even admits that some farmers simply aren't aware of their obligations in many cases. The only case that was actually litigated that I'm aware of is Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser -- a case in which the farmer almost certainly was saving seeds in violation of his contract with Monsanto.
- The section on past environmental violations can be mostly ignored in the context of this deal. It might be an interesting historical conversation, but Monsanto is no longer a chemical company. Cloudant has not struck a deal with the company described in that section.
- I'm sympathetic to the opposition on the labeling debate, but it's a labeling debate! It should take more than a labeling debate to generate comparisons to Nazi Germany (as more than one commenter has done below).
For another side of Monsanto's story, see Norman Bourlag's speech commemorating Monsanto's committment to rice and wheat breeding[1].
Norman Bourlag's life work was to develop and distribute high-yield crops. He's a Nobel peace prize winner and is often credited with saving over a billion lives. Monsanto is carrying on his work at a scale he always strived for.
People in this field is deeply passionate and morally involved in their work. Read the responses from this Monsanto employee at IAMA[2] -- his earnest attempts to explain his morals and his rationale speak for themselves. These people aren't even naked capitalists (not that I have any problem with that) -- they're empirical environmentalists and humanists.
I'm kind of disappointed to hear Monsanto shrilly decried here. Modern ag is a deeply interesting and controversial topic, but that Vanity Fair piece is just rhetoric and linkbait.
Congratulations to Cloudant for signing a big deal. Why work with a company as...ethically ambiguous as Monsanto? I would love to hear how your team decided to accept this deal, and I hope more than dollar signs crossed your minds.
Personally, I would start a startup (if I ever have the guts) for freedom. How could dealing with Monsanto differ from wearing golden handcuffs?
I know socialists hate it, because they hate capitalism. I don't think libertarians hate it, because they don't hate capitalism.
However, as libertarianism has become popular, more and more there are socialists (leftists, "democrats" and "liberals") who are deciding they are "libertarians" without understanding what libertarianism is.
Libertairans -- and this is what defines the movement-- are people who agree with the Non Aggression Principle. (aka NAP) In fact, to be a Libertarian Party Member, and get your card, you had to sign a pledge that you subscribed to the NAP.
Show us how Monsanto is violating the NAP, and a libertarian will agree that Monsanto should be held accountable for the crime.
Libertarianism isn't really so much about hating, or loving various companies. It is really about enforcing the NAP against anyone who would violate another's rights using violence.
Sometimes this includes companies as well, but we're pretty resistant to the piling on that a lot of people do. (e.g.: "I hate monsanto, therefore cloudand is evil").
However, I'm a bit surprised at the sentiment expressed here. Monsanto may be a pretty shitty company, but they are not satan. More so, I'm not convinced that Monsanto's actions are so exceptionally egregious compared to so many others.
What about Cisco getting into bed with China and other oppressive regimes in helping to track down dissidents? What about companies filtering and censoring content (twitter's hash-tag policing, for example)? Or ISPs and hosting companies rolling over with zero effort when presented with take-down notices or requests for customer information (even without a subpoena)?
I am going to sound callous here, the human race can make more people. The level of shit-getting-fucked up by Monsanto could make it really hard to make new people.
It's a weird feeling when a company that's coming from an environment you admire (YC) makes a move like this. Makes you wonder would you do the same, and where would your priorities lie.
That's why you need a cofounder; when you start wondering about things like this, you need someone to slap some sense back into you.
I really like BigCouch - a great open source project. Awesome, really.
That said, I think that Cloudant should have kept a low profile as far as bragging about a big deal with Monsanto, a company that I personally dislike more than any other corporation on this planet. Awful company!!
That said, I don't blame Cloudant for accepting the business, but they should have just put it in their Edgar SEC filings, and not done any press releases. I hope that they did not actively market Monsanto, and that Monsanto liked BigCouch and approached them. That would make it more palatable for me.
Hey Cloudant! Remember that time you first read about IBM supplying the database system that the Nazi regime used to effectively carry out genocide? Yeah, that's you now.
When I read the headline I imagined that Cloudant was going to be pretty upset to see this on the front page of HN - but it looks like it was submitted by Cloudant themselves and links to their own press release!
If it must be done, this is the type of deal that you sweep under the rug and never talk about again, much less publicize on a site like HN.
Independent of how you may feel about Monsanto (and industrial agriculture in general), this is good news for Cloudant -- both an endorsement of their technology by a technically-competent buyer, and a bunch of contributions to their open source codebase.
(I dislike Monsanto's heavy-handed IP enforcement, but the data scientists are pretty far away from that; it's like criticizing Microsoft Research for the Windows OEM bundling concerns. I prefer organic food, but I'm happy that industrial agriculture/the green revolution keeps billions of people from starving.)
It's great news for anybody who wants to use CouchDB, because this means that they're going to run into the problems of big deployments, and that they'll have the money and the motivation to fix it.
Better that Monsanto pays for the big-fixing than me.
Supporting Monsanto is supporting the end of our organic food supply. It saddens me to see any YC company supporting such an evil organization. Money just isn't worth it.
Supporting Ford is supporting the end of our organic transportation industry. I'm kidding, but it is worth remembering that the word "organic" doesn't contain in it some magical counterargument that requires no further elaboration.
This is like during apartheid claiming that you are delighted to have partnership with government of South Africa. Or like now partnership with Ministry of Morals of Saudi Arabia.
All customers are good, but but you don't parade all of them during triumph.
This raises a real dilemma: at what point does a company or organization cross the line from "not my cup of tea" to "ethically ambiguous" to "pure evil"?
What if Cloudant were to power analytics for Trader Joe's?
I don't know anything for sure, but it appears that cloudant themselves posted the link to the press release on Hacker News, which seems like a pretty good indication that they are the ones trying to publicize this, which then points to the latter of your two choices being likely.
Whether this is due to lack of realizing how poorly Monsanto is viewed by most, or whether they thought the somewhat Rand-ian slant of HN' would offset that, I don't know.
I'll offer the first unqualified congratulations. I don't think it's at all obvious that Monsanto is a perpetrator of "devastating evil" (as one of the comments says below) and I'd love it if one or more of the critics would do more than merely state that as fact.
But seriously, if even the politically correct & good natured commenters on HN are unanimous in their hatred for Monsanto, you can be pretty sure it's a pretty despicable company.
So yes, fuck Monsanto, and fuck Cloudant too. Supporting Monsanto in any way is disgusting. You should be ashamed of yourselves.
I am completely with Dionidium here. I've read a number of the books (Michael Pollen, etc.), seen the documentaries, read the science. There are bad effects from agriculture and livestock. Monsanto is not especially bad in this regard - unless you want to not associate with anyone in the food industry who's not organic, it is stupid to place so much hate on them.
[+] [-] oldstrangers|14 years ago|reply
"We’ve been working with them for a few weeks now and we couldn’t be more thrilled with the partnership."
Thrilled? I guess money is thrilling.
"The data & reporting interfaces will be used across Monsanto and should be instrumental in the making of key business decisions."
Key business decisions like which small farmer to sue into oblivion? Or what third world nation's crops to take financially hostage? Thrilling work guys. Really.
[+] [-] pg|14 years ago|reply
If the rule is, if x sells something to Monsanto, fuck x, then what you're saying is fuck the entire corporate world, because I'm sure Monsanto buys Apple computers and Chevrolets and Clorox too. It's sort of ridiculous to hold Cloudant to a standard that essentially zero other companies meet.
There are frequently inane comments of this type at the bottom of HN threads. What's alarming is to see them at the top.
[+] [-] vijayr|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sitkack|14 years ago|reply
BP
Halliburton
Xe Services (Blackwater Worldwide)
The creation of roundup resistent crops is possibly the worst mistakes that the human race has ever made. It took what 3-5 years to make roundup impervious parasites?
Terminator seeds that can't actually create a viable organism? You have to go back to the source (Monsanto) every year.
Mono-cultures and engineered genetic pollution. Monsanto shouldn't exist.
[+] [-] kreek|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freewil|14 years ago|reply
For those not in the know, part of Monsanto's business plan includes creating patented seeds that are genetically altered and "Roundup-ready" so they can be doused with their other business, pesticides.
They also aggressively enforce their seed patents by suing local farmers that have their land contaminated, by no fault of their own, by other farms that may use these "Round-Up ready" seeds. I believe Monsanto has also now developed crops that do not create seeds and/or create seeds DOA.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] thepointyhat|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] glimcat|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] georgemcbay|14 years ago|reply
There are about a dozen companies that I find so vile that anyone doing active business with them is marred by association, Monsanto is one of them.
[+] [-] inmygarage|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dionidium|14 years ago|reply
- The section addressing the lawsuits includes a lot of "farmers say this" type statements. It's not very long on facts. It even admits that some farmers simply aren't aware of their obligations in many cases. The only case that was actually litigated that I'm aware of is Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser -- a case in which the farmer almost certainly was saving seeds in violation of his contract with Monsanto.
- The section on past environmental violations can be mostly ignored in the context of this deal. It might be an interesting historical conversation, but Monsanto is no longer a chemical company. Cloudant has not struck a deal with the company described in that section.
- I'm sympathetic to the opposition on the labeling debate, but it's a labeling debate! It should take more than a labeling debate to generate comparisons to Nazi Germany (as more than one commenter has done below).
[+] [-] shawndrost|14 years ago|reply
Norman Bourlag's life work was to develop and distribute high-yield crops. He's a Nobel peace prize winner and is often credited with saving over a billion lives. Monsanto is carrying on his work at a scale he always strived for.
People in this field is deeply passionate and morally involved in their work. Read the responses from this Monsanto employee at IAMA[2] -- his earnest attempts to explain his morals and his rationale speak for themselves. These people aren't even naked capitalists (not that I have any problem with that) -- they're empirical environmentalists and humanists.
I'm kind of disappointed to hear Monsanto shrilly decried here. Modern ag is a deeply interesting and controversial topic, but that Vanity Fair piece is just rhetoric and linkbait.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1w4zM4SouM [2] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/d83i9/i_work_for_the_m...
[+] [-] mcknz|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cickpass_broken|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] achompas|14 years ago|reply
Personally, I would start a startup (if I ever have the guts) for freedom. How could dealing with Monsanto differ from wearing golden handcuffs?
[+] [-] ebaysucks|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nirvana|14 years ago|reply
However, as libertarianism has become popular, more and more there are socialists (leftists, "democrats" and "liberals") who are deciding they are "libertarians" without understanding what libertarianism is.
Libertairans -- and this is what defines the movement-- are people who agree with the Non Aggression Principle. (aka NAP) In fact, to be a Libertarian Party Member, and get your card, you had to sign a pledge that you subscribed to the NAP.
Show us how Monsanto is violating the NAP, and a libertarian will agree that Monsanto should be held accountable for the crime.
Libertarianism isn't really so much about hating, or loving various companies. It is really about enforcing the NAP against anyone who would violate another's rights using violence.
Sometimes this includes companies as well, but we're pretty resistant to the piling on that a lot of people do. (e.g.: "I hate monsanto, therefore cloudand is evil").
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|14 years ago|reply
However, I'm a bit surprised at the sentiment expressed here. Monsanto may be a pretty shitty company, but they are not satan. More so, I'm not convinced that Monsanto's actions are so exceptionally egregious compared to so many others.
What about Cisco getting into bed with China and other oppressive regimes in helping to track down dissidents? What about companies filtering and censoring content (twitter's hash-tag policing, for example)? Or ISPs and hosting companies rolling over with zero effort when presented with take-down notices or requests for customer information (even without a subpoena)?
[+] [-] sitkack|14 years ago|reply
In long term shittery, Monsanto beats Cisco.
[+] [-] headsclouds|14 years ago|reply
That's why you need a cofounder; when you start wondering about things like this, you need someone to slap some sense back into you.
[+] [-] shiven|14 years ago|reply
Couldn't have said it better myself. What happened to the "no assholes" policy? Guess it does not matter when dollar signs start floating in the air.
[+] [-] mark_l_watson|14 years ago|reply
That said, I think that Cloudant should have kept a low profile as far as bragging about a big deal with Monsanto, a company that I personally dislike more than any other corporation on this planet. Awful company!!
That said, I don't blame Cloudant for accepting the business, but they should have just put it in their Edgar SEC filings, and not done any press releases. I hope that they did not actively market Monsanto, and that Monsanto liked BigCouch and approached them. That would make it more palatable for me.
[+] [-] SODaniel|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nizm|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thepointyhat|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] huntero|14 years ago|reply
If it must be done, this is the type of deal that you sweep under the rug and never talk about again, much less publicize on a site like HN.
[+] [-] rdl|14 years ago|reply
(I dislike Monsanto's heavy-handed IP enforcement, but the data scientists are pretty far away from that; it's like criticizing Microsoft Research for the Windows OEM bundling concerns. I prefer organic food, but I'm happy that industrial agriculture/the green revolution keeps billions of people from starving.)
[+] [-] pjscott|14 years ago|reply
Better that Monsanto pays for the big-fixing than me.
[+] [-] zquestz|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dionidium|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tlogan|14 years ago|reply
This is like during apartheid claiming that you are delighted to have partnership with government of South Africa. Or like now partnership with Ministry of Morals of Saudi Arabia.
All customers are good, but but you don't parade all of them during triumph.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] hvass|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kongqiu|14 years ago|reply
What if Cloudant were to power analytics for Trader Joe's?
Goldman Sachs?
Halliburton?
The Sinaloa Cartel?
Certainly there's a line...
[+] [-] jasonallen|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] georgemcbay|14 years ago|reply
Whether this is due to lack of realizing how poorly Monsanto is viewed by most, or whether they thought the somewhat Rand-ian slant of HN' would offset that, I don't know.
[+] [-] dionidium|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] white_devil|14 years ago|reply
But seriously, if even the politically correct & good natured commenters on HN are unanimous in their hatred for Monsanto, you can be pretty sure it's a pretty despicable company.
So yes, fuck Monsanto, and fuck Cloudant too. Supporting Monsanto in any way is disgusting. You should be ashamed of yourselves.
[+] [-] klbarry|14 years ago|reply