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Lots of industries are very consolidated now, from Banking to Telecom cartels and yes, big tech too. As a libertarian, I propose that in addition to this, we a

by EGreg 2y ago

Lots of industries are very consolidated now, from Banking to Telecom cartels and yes, big tech too. As a libertarian, I propose that in addition to this, we as a developer community also try building good open source software to take on Big Tech, and not simply rely on one giant monolithic thing (Big Government) to save us from another giant thing (the Big Tech oligopoly). Here is how we can take back our communities without waiting for Big Government to rein in Big Tech (which, with Vance and Musk and Google and Facebook and Microsoft & OpenAI, will only capture it more, considering how much they spend on lobbying)… https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/ https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/ We are lucky that Facebook has open sourced Llama (making lemons out of lemonade after that fiasco with the researchers leaking the weights). Imagine if they didn’t. Would breaking up OpenAI and Google DeepMind into smaller companies somehow help the little guy? They broke up Ma Bell DECADES AGO and long distance calls still cost $3 a minute. Why? It is only when open protocols for VoIP came out did the cost drop to near 0 overnight. Open and permissionless protocols like SMTP and HTTP were the reason that the walls of AOL, MSN, Compuserve and other walled gardens fell. Not any government action. AOL open sourcing netscape is the reason we even got Mozilla Firefox and competition to Microsoft’s browser monopoly which they got with their “embrace, extend, exintnguish” strategy. There WAS an antitrust case against Microsoft. But it was the presence of viable open source competition to their internet browser that was far more important. Konqueror led to WebKit, which led to Safari and then Chrome. Firefox was always there as well. This stuff matters. Government antritrust by itself won’t save you from the problems of Big Tech.

dartos 2y ago
Anyone can use open source, including large companies… so open source doesn’t fight against them. _also_ much of what is needed for core infrastructure is hardware, which will pretty much always end up being centralized as it’s expensive to lay fiber optic lines. Also, Llama is not open source. You can’t open source model weights, they’re just freeware. And it has a commercial restriction in its usage license… IMO the fix for this is actually more government. Internet infrastructure should be a utility, ideally with an optional state run infrastructure, so that anyone can have internet access.
- EGreg 2y ago
  Use AGPL. The Big Tech companies have policies to avoid that with and not touch the code with a 20 foot pole. So most of your competitors using the code will be small like yourself. And frankly, there is a lot to be said for collaboration instead of competition. The mindset in the US has been one of rugged capitalism and competition. But this is often less efficient when it comes to building platforms, as Big Tech has. Model weights are open sourced. You may not know how they were trained, but you can run them locally for many purposes - people have built businesses around LLaMa, Stable Diffusion, Bloom etc. Imagine if they couldn’t? Llama was open sourced partly because Mark Z was always an open source guy. Before he made Facebook, he open sourced Synapse rather than selling it to Microsoft for $1M. After he made Facebook, he wanted to make an open, decentralized, permissionless file-sharing system called “Wirehog”. The reason he didn’t do it, is that he went to Silicon Valley and met Sean Parker, who introduced him to “the old boys club” of VCs there. I was there at the first TechCrunch Disrupt in NYC when Parker proudly told everyone that “they has put a bullet in that thing”: https://techcrunch.com/2010/05/26/wirehog/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/05/26/wirehog/ Parker knew very well what happens when another IP-fueled oligopoly, the Big Music Industry (MPAA, RIAA) goes after you for open file sharing. He learned the lesson well and started Plaxo, got VC funding. Parker introduced Zuck to Peter Thiel, whose motto even back then was “competition is for losers, build a monopoly”. The “Paypal Mafia” including Thiel and Musk had gone on to build lots of Big Companies. http://online.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-losers-1410535536 http://online.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-fo... Mentors like that turned Zuck from an open source bro into a corporate golden boy who ruthlessly buys up the competition (WhatsApp, Instagram, tried to buy Snapchat etc) and takes advantage of user privacy to monetize any way they can: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism He has recently rehabilitated his image, and largely because of open sourcing Llama and being “the open alternative to ‘OpenAI’” The mindset of Silicon Valley VCs is part of the larger cycle of “capturing value” inside large companies, their capital is there to “remove friction”, get critical mass and go public in an IPO. Then the shareholders continue to demand the company extracts rents from the ecosystem. Last year we even learned more than half of the VCs and their startups ALL BANKED AT THE SAME BANK! To me this is a great symbol of just how centralized the whole old boys club is. And the same Peter Thiel started a run on that bank.
beeflet 2y ago
>SMTP and HTTP were the reason that the walls of AOL, MSN, Compuserve and other walled gardens fell. This was hard fought because companies like microsoft controlled the major SMTP and HTTP clients, so they controlled the de-facto standard. Most people today are running hardware with closed-source software and locked bootloaders so the idea that we can just change our minds and have a competitive environment tomorrow is false to boot. It would take a major cultural shift to change.

by EGreg 2y ago

dartos 2y ago

Anyone can use open source, including large companies… so open source doesn’t fight against them. _also_ much of what is needed for core infrastructure is hardware, which will pretty much always end up being centralized as it’s expensive to lay fiber optic lines. Also, Llama is not open source. You can’t open source model weights, they’re just freeware. And it has a commercial restriction in its usage license… IMO the fix for this is actually more government. Internet infrastructure should be a utility, ideally with an optional state run infrastructure, so that anyone can have internet access.

EGreg 2y ago
Use AGPL. The Big Tech companies have policies to avoid that with and not touch the code with a 20 foot pole. So most of your competitors using the code will be small like yourself. And frankly, there is a lot to be said for collaboration instead of competition. The mindset in the US has been one of rugged capitalism and competition. But this is often less efficient when it comes to building platforms, as Big Tech has. Model weights are open sourced. You may not know how they were trained, but you can run them locally for many purposes - people have built businesses around LLaMa, Stable Diffusion, Bloom etc. Imagine if they couldn’t? Llama was open sourced partly because Mark Z was always an open source guy. Before he made Facebook, he open sourced Synapse rather than selling it to Microsoft for $1M. After he made Facebook, he wanted to make an open, decentralized, permissionless file-sharing system called “Wirehog”. The reason he didn’t do it, is that he went to Silicon Valley and met Sean Parker, who introduced him to “the old boys club” of VCs there. I was there at the first TechCrunch Disrupt in NYC when Parker proudly told everyone that “they has put a bullet in that thing”: https://techcrunch.com/2010/05/26/wirehog/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/05/26/wirehog/ Parker knew very well what happens when another IP-fueled oligopoly, the Big Music Industry (MPAA, RIAA) goes after you for open file sharing. He learned the lesson well and started Plaxo, got VC funding. Parker introduced Zuck to Peter Thiel, whose motto even back then was “competition is for losers, build a monopoly”. The “Paypal Mafia” including Thiel and Musk had gone on to build lots of Big Companies. http://online.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-losers-1410535536 http://online.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-fo... Mentors like that turned Zuck from an open source bro into a corporate golden boy who ruthlessly buys up the competition (WhatsApp, Instagram, tried to buy Snapchat etc) and takes advantage of user privacy to monetize any way they can: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism He has recently rehabilitated his image, and largely because of open sourcing Llama and being “the open alternative to ‘OpenAI’” The mindset of Silicon Valley VCs is part of the larger cycle of “capturing value” inside large companies, their capital is there to “remove friction”, get critical mass and go public in an IPO. Then the shareholders continue to demand the company extracts rents from the ecosystem. Last year we even learned more than half of the VCs and their startups ALL BANKED AT THE SAME BANK! To me this is a great symbol of just how centralized the whole old boys club is. And the same Peter Thiel started a run on that bank.

beeflet 2y ago

>SMTP and HTTP were the reason that the walls of AOL, MSN, Compuserve and other walled gardens fell. This was hard fought because companies like microsoft controlled the major SMTP and HTTP clients, so they controlled the de-facto standard. Most people today are running hardware with closed-source software and locked bootloaders so the idea that we can just change our minds and have a competitive environment tomorrow is false to boot. It would take a major cultural shift to change.