Great piece. Our startup supports http://deeplearning4j.org http://deeplearning4j.org and http://nd4j.org http://nd4j.org, and it's a great feeling having the o

Great piece. Our startup supports http://deeplearning4j.org http://deeplearning4j.org and http://nd4j.org http://nd4j.org, and it's a great feeling having the open-source wind at your back. Talented strangers helping to fix and grow your project. To use a couple economists' terms, positive externalities are generated when code is open-sourced, and the beneficiaries are the companies contributing, because together they're making something greater than any one firm could build alone. Our software is orders of magnitude better simply for having been opened to hundreds of pairs of eyes. The QA is intense. Engineers at closed-source deep-learning startups chafe under their gag orders, especially since so much of what's closed quickly becomes outdated. Lack of transparency can easily hide lack of competence.