3 ms·

There is nothing weirdly cynical about it. This is a fact of life in Silicon Valley - that a lot of FLOSS is released for strategic reasons (such as building up

by gwern 2y ago

There is nothing weirdly cynical about it. This is a fact of life in Silicon Valley - that a lot of FLOSS is released for strategic reasons (such as building up a community before enclosing it to extract a profit), and not because the Grinch's heart grew 2 sizes one day. "Commoditize your complement": https://gwern.net/complement https://gwern.net/complement You can benefit a lot from it, and I have... but do be sure you know what you are ferrying on your back before you decide to offer it a ride across the river.

xgb84j 2y ago
How do you think Meta profits off React and PyTorch? Just marketing to get good candidates?
- Der_Einzige 2y ago
  The same way that the US benefits from being the reserve currency of the world. Control of the ecosystem allows meta to define the rules of the game. Also it's bad when HN is downvoting fking GWERN
- gwern 2y ago
  No. I think they use that web & ML software to help run their $1.3 trillion marketcap online social network company, on which, I am given to understand from US Congressional hearings, they sell ads.
talldayo 2y ago
> a lot of FLOSS is released for strategic reasons (such as building up a community before enclosing it Not only is "a lot" of FOSS not released like this, both free software and Meta's models cannot be monetized post-release. If Meta decides to charge money for Llama4, then everyone with access to the prior models can keep their access and even finetune/redistribute their model. There is no strategic flip Meta can attempt here without shotgunning their own foot off.
- gwern 2y ago
  It absolutely is released like that. Please note that 'such as' does not mean 'all', 'a majority', or anything like that. It simply means 'one example'. (I eat many things 'such as' honey, yet that doesn't make me Winnie the Pooh.) And enclosures come up regularly here on HN where suddenly a company has embarked on a new incredible journey involving 'not releasing all the source code anymore under an OSI-approved license', so they are not even that exotic an outcome.
  - gwern 2y ago
    Today, for example, on Twitter, people are pointing out that Runway, which made a big deal out of how they were releasing DL models and not keeping them proprietary, has quietly deleted all its stuff on HuggingFace. (Much like how, say, Mistral decided that it was no longer releasing all its models, after presenting itself as the big open model champion opposed to OA.) Only a five-year-old child is either surprised or angered by this turn of events.
    - talldayo 2y ago
      Twitter is the epitome of people who "don't get it". For one, you don't use Twitter anymore because the damn website doesn't exist. Your new website, 'X' is filled with boiling frogs that (somehow) expect things to get better. People that don't get the proverbial memo when a neo-Nazi buys their website and replaces it's logo with a half-swastika. It would not be exaggeration to say that the quality and prestige of 'X' chatter is about as worthwhile as 4chan's resident opinion. For two - they can't do shit. Every one of those businesses can try to pivot into being the next OpenAI, but even OpenAI can't be fucked to turn a profit. They can't retract their models (remember Llama 1.0? hahahahahahahahaha) and they can't piss and moan to the authorities when their weights leak because 99% of them contain unlicensed copyrighted material in the first place. The real twist to this Gordian knot? Open source is the only model you can release conventional AI under, because anything else precludes a Fair Use defense. Everyone that has "proprietary" models only manages it by playing keep-away with the community. > Only a five-year-old child is either surprised or angered by this turn of events. Five year old children know that they can keep their toys once they stop selling them at Wal-mart. Pulling a model off HF doesn't stop new finetunes or even redistribution and re-quantization of the old model. Mistral and Runway can do whatever they want, all their models are belong to us.

by gwern 2y ago

xgb84j 2y ago

How do you think Meta profits off React and PyTorch? Just marketing to get good candidates?

Der_Einzige 2y ago
The same way that the US benefits from being the reserve currency of the world. Control of the ecosystem allows meta to define the rules of the game. Also it's bad when HN is downvoting fking GWERN
gwern 2y ago
No. I think they use that web & ML software to help run their $1.3 trillion marketcap online social network company, on which, I am given to understand from US Congressional hearings, they sell ads.

talldayo 2y ago

> a lot of FLOSS is released for strategic reasons (such as building up a community before enclosing it Not only is "a lot" of FOSS not released like this, both free software and Meta's models cannot be monetized post-release. If Meta decides to charge money for Llama4, then everyone with access to the prior models can keep their access and even finetune/redistribute their model. There is no strategic flip Meta can attempt here without shotgunning their own foot off.

gwern 2y ago
It absolutely is released like that. Please note that 'such as' does not mean 'all', 'a majority', or anything like that. It simply means 'one example'. (I eat many things 'such as' honey, yet that doesn't make me Winnie the Pooh.) And enclosures come up regularly here on HN where suddenly a company has embarked on a new incredible journey involving 'not releasing all the source code anymore under an OSI-approved license', so they are not even that exotic an outcome.
- gwern 2y ago
  Today, for example, on Twitter, people are pointing out that Runway, which made a big deal out of how they were releasing DL models and not keeping them proprietary, has quietly deleted all its stuff on HuggingFace. (Much like how, say, Mistral decided that it was no longer releasing all its models, after presenting itself as the big open model champion opposed to OA.) Only a five-year-old child is either surprised or angered by this turn of events.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    Twitter is the epitome of people who "don't get it". For one, you don't use Twitter anymore because the damn website doesn't exist. Your new website, 'X' is filled with boiling frogs that (somehow) expect things to get better. People that don't get the proverbial memo when a neo-Nazi buys their website and replaces it's logo with a half-swastika. It would not be exaggeration to say that the quality and prestige of 'X' chatter is about as worthwhile as 4chan's resident opinion. For two - they can't do shit. Every one of those businesses can try to pivot into being the next OpenAI, but even OpenAI can't be fucked to turn a profit. They can't retract their models (remember Llama 1.0? hahahahahahahahaha) and they can't piss and moan to the authorities when their weights leak because 99% of them contain unlicensed copyrighted material in the first place. The real twist to this Gordian knot? Open source is the only model you can release conventional AI under, because anything else precludes a Fair Use defense. Everyone that has "proprietary" models only manages it by playing keep-away with the community. > Only a five-year-old child is either surprised or angered by this turn of events. Five year old children know that they can keep their toys once they stop selling them at Wal-mart. Pulling a model off HF doesn't stop new finetunes or even redistribution and re-quantization of the old model. Mistral and Runway can do whatever they want, all their models are belong to us.