They're selling them data analysis. I cannot find in that a great moral question or hazard. I'm sure when Monsanto employees go about their daily lives they also are sold food, clothes, computers, cell phones...
Nick O'Niell's analysis of Paul Graham's comment is nonsensical:
"He’s actively suggesting the idea that because other people are doing it (people with big brand names), it’s ok for a YCombinator company to do it as well."
Putting aside the rape of the English language going on in that sentence --'actively suggesting'? --, it is false in its claims. Paul pointed out that if the moral standard is that companies who sell things to nasty companies are committing a moral offense, then we need to apply this standard massively, to essentially every company that exists. Targeting Cloudant specifically is unfair and seems arbitrary.
That's rather disingenuous. Let's let them explain it:
"Monsanto has chosen Cloudant to be the core of their new genome analysis platform.
Cloudant’s BigCouch will be the core, for both storage and analysis of a new, company-wide platform powering a fundamental aspect of a Fortune 500 business: the analysis & identification of new traits & genomic combinations in agricultural crops. The data & reporting interfaces will be used across Monsanto and should be instrumental in the making of key business decisions."
"We’ve been working with them for a few weeks now and we couldn’t be more thrilled with the partnership."
Cloudant has placed themselves at the very heart of the Monsanto empire. They are the foundation and core of Monsanto's most essential operations. That goes above and beyond simply selling someone something. They are partners.
I'm not sure how many more ways I can break this down for you. I figured my previous comment was pretty clear.
Asserting that Cloudant is only selling Monsanto a simple data analysis is disingenuous, as clearly proven by Cloudant's own press release where they state how significant their partnership with Monsanto is. Partnership is a key word here.
Selling someone a service like Google Analytics (random example) is a lot different than partnering with a company for multiple weeks and shaping the entire core functionality of a company around your collaborative efforts. Even more so is saying that this partnership will help shape the way the company fundamentally does business.
Like I said, its disingenuous to downplay Cloudant's role, considering how highly they emphasized said role.
Nick O'Niell's analysis of Paul Graham's comment is nonsensical:
"He’s actively suggesting the idea that because other people are doing it (people with big brand names), it’s ok for a YCombinator company to do it as well."
Putting aside the rape of the English language going on in that sentence --'actively suggesting'? --, it is false in its claims. Paul pointed out that if the moral standard is that companies who sell things to nasty companies are committing a moral offense, then we need to apply this standard massively, to essentially every company that exists. Targeting Cloudant specifically is unfair and seems arbitrary.