4 ms·

We are lucky that Alibaba, Meta and Mistral sees some strategic value in public releases. If we it was just one of them, it would be a fragile situation for dow

We are lucky that Alibaba, Meta and Mistral sees some strategic value in public releases. If we it was just one of them, it would be a fragile situation for downstream startups. And they’re even situated in three different countries.

diggan 2y ago
> We are lucky that Alibaba, Meta and Mistral sees some strategic value in public releases. Now if we only can get Meta to understand what "Open Source" means so the word doesn't lose all meaning in the future.
- immibis 2y ago
  Words mean whatever's convenient to the bottom line, which is why the OSI (a consortium of Amazon, Google, Microsoft etc) still doesn't recognize the SSPL, as it would be particularly inconvenient for clouds.
  - api 2y ago
    So you're saying open source doesn't exist to be free labor for SaaS? The OSI is fully captured by companies with a vested interest in promoting that model and/or using open source to 'dump' on the market and commoditize their compliments. To recapture the spirit of open source as being about freedom for actual users (as opposed to free labor for jailed SaaS) and a mutualistic gift culture (as opposed to a take-take-take culture) probably requires abandoning the OSI.
    - sangnoir 2y ago
      > To recapture the spirit of open source as being about freedom for actual users (as opposed to free labor for jailed SaaS) That spirit was never there; "Open Source" was created to be corporate -friendly as it was predated by Free software, which is rigidly committed to users freedom.
      - dleary 2y ago
        That is a pretty cynical take. FSF good, OSI bad. > ”Open Source" was created to be corporate-friendly as it was predated by Free software, which is rigidly committed to users freedom. Rigidly committed to a certain interpretation of users freedom. And that interpretation happens to involve removing a number of freedoms “for your own good”. It is more correct to say that the GPL was created to be anti-corporate, as it was predated by both the MIT and BSD licenses, which are more free, both for users and corporations, which the FSF finds intolerable.
        sangnoir 2y ago
        > That is a pretty cynical take. FSF good, OSI bad. I ascribed no moral value judgement on which is better. However , Tim O'Reilly isn't exactly shy about who the target of those early Open Source conferences (OSCON) were, and what they were attempting to achieve - which they succeeded at.
        immibis 2y ago
        Free software isn't great either. Stallman is fine with proprietary software as long as it's baked in ROM, which is even worse than making it distributable but without providing source.
        api 2y ago
        He’s pragmatic on that. He would prefer free ROM but knows getting hardware companies to do that is quite the uphill battle. ROM is generally hardware specific anyway so there is less benefit to it being free. Where else would you run it?
        immibis 2y ago
        ROM is generally firmware for an embedded processor, and being able to modify that opens up new possibilities for the device i.e. more freedom. For example it might be possible to implement new offload features on a network card - the fact that no one bothers to do so doesn't mean the possibility shouldn't be there. I'd rather have the vendor put it in public domain or thereabouts, and make it editable. They're making money by selling the hardware anyway.
    - jazzyjackson 2y ago
      compliment vs complement :^)
- oarsinsync 2y ago
  > so the word doesn't lose all meaning in the future The English language doesn’t have a central body that decides what words get to exist, and what they mean, like e.g. the French. English dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. The definitions are defined by popular culture, rather than a central body. What is needed is a large enough mass of people to recognise a word as having a particular definition, in order to change/add that definition. See “literally” having a definition of “for emphasis, not literally” as a prime example of the wisdom of crowds.
  - diggan 2y ago
    Right, I don't think my complaint is "Why isn't there a central body that defines words?" but rather "Why are we letting Meta propagate the idea that something we cannot re-create ourselves, can possibly be Open Source?" and I guess the implication is that I'm complaining about us letting Meta change the definition by popular culture, to use your words.
ein0p 2y ago
They're salting the earth / destroying the moat for OpenAI and Anthropic, and to a lesser extent, for Google. Basically, now pretty much anyone can do "sufficient" AI right in their garage. I use Mistral Large, and most of the time its output is easily on par with GPT4, with total privacy. This destruction of the moat prevents the future where e.g. OpenAI becomes your interface to the internet, recommendations, shopping, social media, news, etc. The moment you start doing something that's clearly valuable, 10 other companies pop up and destroy your potential future margin. They are trying the "internet search" part of that, because that needs a search index, and that's not something that's easy to do. We're lucky that Google blew its AI lead so badly - it _could_ realistically become all of the above, if it wasn't so badly mismanaged.
jaredsohn 2y ago
Maybe 'public AI' is a better term than 'open' ai

diggan 2y ago

> We are lucky that Alibaba, Meta and Mistral sees some strategic value in public releases. Now if we only can get Meta to understand what "Open Source" means so the word doesn't lose all meaning in the future.

immibis 2y ago
Words mean whatever's convenient to the bottom line, which is why the OSI (a consortium of Amazon, Google, Microsoft etc) still doesn't recognize the SSPL, as it would be particularly inconvenient for clouds.
- api 2y ago
  So you're saying open source doesn't exist to be free labor for SaaS? The OSI is fully captured by companies with a vested interest in promoting that model and/or using open source to 'dump' on the market and commoditize their compliments. To recapture the spirit of open source as being about freedom for actual users (as opposed to free labor for jailed SaaS) and a mutualistic gift culture (as opposed to a take-take-take culture) probably requires abandoning the OSI.
  - sangnoir 2y ago
    > To recapture the spirit of open source as being about freedom for actual users (as opposed to free labor for jailed SaaS) That spirit was never there; "Open Source" was created to be corporate -friendly as it was predated by Free software, which is rigidly committed to users freedom.
    - dleary 2y ago
      That is a pretty cynical take. FSF good, OSI bad. > ”Open Source" was created to be corporate-friendly as it was predated by Free software, which is rigidly committed to users freedom. Rigidly committed to a certain interpretation of users freedom. And that interpretation happens to involve removing a number of freedoms “for your own good”. It is more correct to say that the GPL was created to be anti-corporate, as it was predated by both the MIT and BSD licenses, which are more free, both for users and corporations, which the FSF finds intolerable.
      - sangnoir 2y ago
        > That is a pretty cynical take. FSF good, OSI bad. I ascribed no moral value judgement on which is better. However , Tim O'Reilly isn't exactly shy about who the target of those early Open Source conferences (OSCON) were, and what they were attempting to achieve - which they succeeded at.
        immibis 2y ago
        Free software isn't great either. Stallman is fine with proprietary software as long as it's baked in ROM, which is even worse than making it distributable but without providing source.
        api 2y ago
        He’s pragmatic on that. He would prefer free ROM but knows getting hardware companies to do that is quite the uphill battle. ROM is generally hardware specific anyway so there is less benefit to it being free. Where else would you run it?
        immibis 2y ago
        ROM is generally firmware for an embedded processor, and being able to modify that opens up new possibilities for the device i.e. more freedom. For example it might be possible to implement new offload features on a network card - the fact that no one bothers to do so doesn't mean the possibility shouldn't be there. I'd rather have the vendor put it in public domain or thereabouts, and make it editable. They're making money by selling the hardware anyway.
  - jazzyjackson 2y ago
    compliment vs complement :^)
oarsinsync 2y ago
> so the word doesn't lose all meaning in the future The English language doesn’t have a central body that decides what words get to exist, and what they mean, like e.g. the French. English dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. The definitions are defined by popular culture, rather than a central body. What is needed is a large enough mass of people to recognise a word as having a particular definition, in order to change/add that definition. See “literally” having a definition of “for emphasis, not literally” as a prime example of the wisdom of crowds.
- diggan 2y ago
  Right, I don't think my complaint is "Why isn't there a central body that defines words?" but rather "Why are we letting Meta propagate the idea that something we cannot re-create ourselves, can possibly be Open Source?" and I guess the implication is that I'm complaining about us letting Meta change the definition by popular culture, to use your words.

ein0p 2y ago

They're salting the earth / destroying the moat for OpenAI and Anthropic, and to a lesser extent, for Google. Basically, now pretty much anyone can do "sufficient" AI right in their garage. I use Mistral Large, and most of the time its output is easily on par with GPT4, with total privacy. This destruction of the moat prevents the future where e.g. OpenAI becomes your interface to the internet, recommendations, shopping, social media, news, etc. The moment you start doing something that's clearly valuable, 10 other companies pop up and destroy your potential future margin. They are trying the "internet search" part of that, because that needs a search index, and that's not something that's easy to do. We're lucky that Google blew its AI lead so badly - it _could_ realistically become all of the above, if it wasn't so badly mismanaged.

jaredsohn 2y ago

Maybe 'public AI' is a better term than 'open' ai