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The X website is very explicit that X is not a non-profit: > "Is it a research center? An incubator? A non-profit? No, it’s a moonshot factory"

TaylorAlexander 5y ago
What bothers me is that they really want to "change the world". Well in my mind, intentionally open sourcing something so that innovators all over the world can contribute can be a powerful force for improving upon an idea and lowering costs. When 3D printers were under patent the single company developing them got the cost down to $25k in 12 years. When the patents expired and people all over the world worked on it, the cost dropped to $250 in ten years. X spends huge sums of money but never takes this approach of intentionally open sourcing a project during continued development in order to tap in to eager innovators all over the world who could contribute. And I think that is unfortunate because that approach can be extremely effective for lowering the cost of things and making them accessible to people all over the world. Personally I feel like they could do this with a few small projects as it is a very cheap development methodology. It would cost them basically nothing compared to their other projects. But then you can't profit from it (as much), so it doesn't fit in to what X is doing. Which is weird, because X is a powerful development house. They could score a lot of goodwill if they did this on a few of the right projects. And it would have kept me there. But I couldn't find anything like that.
- thefunnyman 5y ago
  I fully agree, open source is incredibly underutilized. When it works well it can be extremely powerful. Take for instance the recent flipper zero kickstarter/product. It’s finally shopping and even though it’s very incomplete there’s already a vibrant community of hackers tinkering with it. I feel the same disappointment as you. As a child I envisioned a world where I could go work at somewhere like Google and truly use their resources to give back but every project seems in some way tainted by the underlying drive to make everything profitable for the company funding it.

TaylorAlexander 5y ago

What bothers me is that they really want to "change the world". Well in my mind, intentionally open sourcing something so that innovators all over the world can contribute can be a powerful force for improving upon an idea and lowering costs. When 3D printers were under patent the single company developing them got the cost down to $25k in 12 years. When the patents expired and people all over the world worked on it, the cost dropped to $250 in ten years. X spends huge sums of money but never takes this approach of intentionally open sourcing a project during continued development in order to tap in to eager innovators all over the world who could contribute. And I think that is unfortunate because that approach can be extremely effective for lowering the cost of things and making them accessible to people all over the world. Personally I feel like they could do this with a few small projects as it is a very cheap development methodology. It would cost them basically nothing compared to their other projects. But then you can't profit from it (as much), so it doesn't fit in to what X is doing. Which is weird, because X is a powerful development house. They could score a lot of goodwill if they did this on a few of the right projects. And it would have kept me there. But I couldn't find anything like that.

thefunnyman 5y ago
I fully agree, open source is incredibly underutilized. When it works well it can be extremely powerful. Take for instance the recent flipper zero kickstarter/product. It’s finally shopping and even though it’s very incomplete there’s already a vibrant community of hackers tinkering with it. I feel the same disappointment as you. As a child I envisioned a world where I could go work at somewhere like Google and truly use their resources to give back but every project seems in some way tainted by the underlying drive to make everything profitable for the company funding it.