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seeing that Pytorch started as Chainer 'fork' (?) with similar API but different backend, showed us how much a BigCo can do against a startup, it's unsettling.

seeing that Pytorch started as Chainer 'fork' (?) with similar API but different backend, showed us how much a BigCo can do against a startup, it's unsettling. Chainer autograd has been around years ago.

apaszke 9y ago
PyTorch was never a Chainer fork. The whole codebase are C libs from Lua Torch, and a bunch of Python code that was written entirely for this project. Chainer was an inspiration, but no code was ever shared between those two projects.
agibsonccc 9y ago
As a DL framework author myself, I can say for a fact we all steal good ideas from each other. There's no conspiracy here. A lot of folks not actually building the tools like to assume there's some big war going on where we're trying to sabotage each other. In reality, we're all just scratching our own itch. This goes for pytorch, TF, as well as us. Yeah there's occasional public debate, but we're not out to go to "war" with each other or anything. It's the end users that make this out to be something it's not. Just food for thought here.
- thanatropism 9y ago
  TensorFlow is hardly a cat scratch fever, it's a major strategic effort by a top 3 global tech conglomerate.
  - agibsonccc 9y ago
    Yes and so are the other frameworks? When I said "scratching our own itch" google is building it for their own strategic initiatives ranging from hiring to google cloud. FB uses pytorch for their research, caffe2 for deployment. CNTK is used by microsoft. Onnx was a joint effort between FB and microsoft to compete against TF's file format. I'm not sure what your point is. What I was attacking was this "conspiracy" that startups and these companies are somehow out to get each other. Of course there is competition and various strategic reasons folks implement their own frameworks. We ourselves implement our own framework that imports all the python frameworks and runs them in production on the JVM and big data stack. Imagine that, I do it to sell licenses. The "startup" the above was alluding to was PFN in Japan. FB supposedly "stole" ideas from chainer. And yes they did, they even say so as such. It doesn't mean there's a conspiracy, it's just smart to do. If something is working adapt it for your use case. That's all that happens across any of the major frameworks. I'm not sure if I undersold myself a bit, but I just want to say this is all I've been doing since 2013. My framework is well used by a great portion of the fortune 500 and all over the globe as well as part of a major foundation. It's not some toy, it's a commercial venture with millions in funding and a decent sized engineering team, open source foundation/community behind it. I'm more than familiar with the space and even compete with google's business model to a certain extent.I have plenty of incentive to care about these things, but I'm still calling it out for what it is. I talk to other framework authors and have nothing but good things to say about them. We're all out there just building what we need to to suit our purposes. Yes those things have incentives, but it doesn't mean there needs to be conspiracies and trash talk. I'll call it out again: The users are the ones who blow this stuff way out of proportion. I've seen this play out for years now.

apaszke 9y ago

PyTorch was never a Chainer fork. The whole codebase are C libs from Lua Torch, and a bunch of Python code that was written entirely for this project. Chainer was an inspiration, but no code was ever shared between those two projects.

agibsonccc 9y ago

As a DL framework author myself, I can say for a fact we all steal good ideas from each other. There's no conspiracy here. A lot of folks not actually building the tools like to assume there's some big war going on where we're trying to sabotage each other. In reality, we're all just scratching our own itch. This goes for pytorch, TF, as well as us. Yeah there's occasional public debate, but we're not out to go to "war" with each other or anything. It's the end users that make this out to be something it's not. Just food for thought here.

thanatropism 9y ago
TensorFlow is hardly a cat scratch fever, it's a major strategic effort by a top 3 global tech conglomerate.
- agibsonccc 9y ago
  Yes and so are the other frameworks? When I said "scratching our own itch" google is building it for their own strategic initiatives ranging from hiring to google cloud. FB uses pytorch for their research, caffe2 for deployment. CNTK is used by microsoft. Onnx was a joint effort between FB and microsoft to compete against TF's file format. I'm not sure what your point is. What I was attacking was this "conspiracy" that startups and these companies are somehow out to get each other. Of course there is competition and various strategic reasons folks implement their own frameworks. We ourselves implement our own framework that imports all the python frameworks and runs them in production on the JVM and big data stack. Imagine that, I do it to sell licenses. The "startup" the above was alluding to was PFN in Japan. FB supposedly "stole" ideas from chainer. And yes they did, they even say so as such. It doesn't mean there's a conspiracy, it's just smart to do. If something is working adapt it for your use case. That's all that happens across any of the major frameworks. I'm not sure if I undersold myself a bit, but I just want to say this is all I've been doing since 2013. My framework is well used by a great portion of the fortune 500 and all over the globe as well as part of a major foundation. It's not some toy, it's a commercial venture with millions in funding and a decent sized engineering team, open source foundation/community behind it. I'm more than familiar with the space and even compete with google's business model to a certain extent.I have plenty of incentive to care about these things, but I'm still calling it out for what it is. I talk to other framework authors and have nothing but good things to say about them. We're all out there just building what we need to to suit our purposes. Yes those things have incentives, but it doesn't mean there needs to be conspiracies and trash talk. I'll call it out again: The users are the ones who blow this stuff way out of proportion. I've seen this play out for years now.