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I love Huggingface. I worry they will be the next Docker. What is the moat? "We will run your inference" can't be the answer.

by kiratp 3y ago

ramesh31 3y ago
>What is the moat? "We will run your inference" can't be the answer. Network effect. It's more like a GitHub for ML. Also trust. When your business is hosting binaries, that's no small feat.
- ulrikhansen54 3y ago
  They also have an insane amount of traffic - very envious, they'll be able to capitalise on other things as soon as they start to build commercial products people are willing to pay big money for.
- CardenB 3y ago
  What do people think separated GitHub from docker? Docker also had DockerHub, but it wasn’t as necessary as GitHub and didn’t catch on as well. I think HF is more like docker than GitHub. GitHub had the wide scope to be huge. Docker was too niche (in comparison) and didn’t catch on so much to be necessary for every single project like Git did. Similarly, HF is also niche in the sense that docker is. There’s no need to host your model on HF, it’s just a convenience for some projects. It’s effectively a package manager for ML models. It seems that if there’s a way to make models more easily runnable, HF would not be necessary at all. They have a community there, but it’s not something that can be monetized well.
  - hereonout2 3y ago
    Dockerhub is great for sharing images with the world at large, much like HF is for models. But once you're at the point where you want to host your images / models for business use do you really still want them? All cloud providers seem to have an image hosting feature, why go through hassle of managing and paying for a docker hub account when you're already on AWS and can integrate better with ECR? The same problem exists for ML model hosting IMO. Github is totally different, it's a more complex and human proposition. For many github has replaced an entire raft of tools, not just code hosting.
    - CardenB 3y ago
      Agree, HF is more similar to docker than it is to GitHub
  - ramesh31 3y ago
    Docker grew too fast. They chased VC dollars for what really was just a cool open source project. I spent some time at their first office in SF ten years ago for meetups. They had a really cool unique culture. I think that just doesn't scale some times.
    - fulladder 3y ago
      The one on Brannan or the earlier dotcloud office?
politelemon 3y ago
A Hugging Swarm which then loses tech mindshare to an immensely complex frankensteined offering, "cogit8s".
- verdverm 3y ago
  L7N already exists
fulladder 3y ago
>What is the moat? "We will run your inference" can't be the answer. What was the moat when AWS EC2 launched in 2007? There were already thousands of little mom-and-pop VPS companies that would rent you a virtual Linux box with root permissions for $15/month.

I love Huggingface. I worry they will be the next Docker. What is the moat? "We will run your inference" can't be the answer.

by kiratp 3y ago

I love Huggingface. I worry they will be the next Docker. What is the moat? "We will run your inference" can't be the answer.

ramesh31 3y ago

>What is the moat? "We will run your inference" can't be the answer. Network effect. It's more like a GitHub for ML. Also trust. When your business is hosting binaries, that's no small feat.

ulrikhansen54 3y ago
They also have an insane amount of traffic - very envious, they'll be able to capitalise on other things as soon as they start to build commercial products people are willing to pay big money for.
CardenB 3y ago
What do people think separated GitHub from docker? Docker also had DockerHub, but it wasn’t as necessary as GitHub and didn’t catch on as well. I think HF is more like docker than GitHub. GitHub had the wide scope to be huge. Docker was too niche (in comparison) and didn’t catch on so much to be necessary for every single project like Git did. Similarly, HF is also niche in the sense that docker is. There’s no need to host your model on HF, it’s just a convenience for some projects. It’s effectively a package manager for ML models. It seems that if there’s a way to make models more easily runnable, HF would not be necessary at all. They have a community there, but it’s not something that can be monetized well.
- hereonout2 3y ago
  Dockerhub is great for sharing images with the world at large, much like HF is for models. But once you're at the point where you want to host your images / models for business use do you really still want them? All cloud providers seem to have an image hosting feature, why go through hassle of managing and paying for a docker hub account when you're already on AWS and can integrate better with ECR? The same problem exists for ML model hosting IMO. Github is totally different, it's a more complex and human proposition. For many github has replaced an entire raft of tools, not just code hosting.
  - CardenB 3y ago
    Agree, HF is more similar to docker than it is to GitHub
- ramesh31 3y ago
  Docker grew too fast. They chased VC dollars for what really was just a cool open source project. I spent some time at their first office in SF ten years ago for meetups. They had a really cool unique culture. I think that just doesn't scale some times.
  - fulladder 3y ago
    The one on Brannan or the earlier dotcloud office?

politelemon 3y ago

A Hugging Swarm which then loses tech mindshare to an immensely complex frankensteined offering, "cogit8s".

verdverm 3y ago
L7N already exists

fulladder 3y ago

>What is the moat? "We will run your inference" can't be the answer. What was the moat when AWS EC2 launched in 2007? There were already thousands of little mom-and-pop VPS companies that would rent you a virtual Linux box with root permissions for $15/month.