4 ms·

No real information, just a marketing spiel.

by jmclnx 2y ago

ysofunny 2y ago
i mean... it's IBM so what did we really expect?
- globalnode 2y ago
  I was thinking of trying Fedora (currently using Debian) and this comment made me look up who owns red-hat. ibm now owns red-hat, and apparently vanguard owns a huge chunk of ibm. I wonder how much influence any of the sponsors have over what goes into the os and what direction it takes.
  - rat87 2y ago
    Vanguard "owns" a huge chunk of everything. Vanguard runs index funds, most peoples retirements are vanguard buying small shares of an index fund representing all the big companies on the stock exchange
    - TZubiri 2y ago
      Also they simultaneously hold the ownership rights as well as equivalent owenrship liabilities, so they own shit squat in net terms (excpet maybe their management fees).
      - mattkrause 2y ago
        It’s even weirder than that! Vanguard has an odd corporate structure where it’s owned by the funds that it manages, so it’s effectively a co-op owned by its customers.
        _yb2s 2y ago
        I don’t understand why customer owned co-ops aren’t ubiquitous. Vanguard is amazing- low fees, and great services- they beat all of the competition. I had to call their support line today and it was the most professional customer service I’ve ever experienced.
        TZubiri 2y ago
        Interesting, that's inline with Bogle's mission for low (0%) mgmt fees. I think it probably doesn't apply to other majority holders like BlackRock though.
    - fny 2y ago
      Vanguard is everyone’s retirement account. Everytime someone buys their S&P 500 ETF, they go buy stocks.
  - hedora 2y ago
    You probably missed the news that RedHat decided to systematically violate the GPL: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis... tl;dr: They no longer publish source packages except to paying customers. If the paying customers republish the source, then RedHat closes the account. I'm surprised none of the upstream developers have sued them for violating the license. There's no way I'd trust an organization that was behaving so unethically with control over my machine's package manager. Anyway, I've been pretty happy with Devuan (Debian without SystemD). I find it much more stable than Ubuntu, Arch, Debian, etc., and all the userspace stuff I care about works great.
    - globalnode 2y ago
      Cheers, will check it out.
    - tbrownaw 2y ago
      > I'm surprised none of the upstream developers have sued them for violating the license. Sounds like that implies that they probably actually aren't.
    - dralley 2y ago
      This is wrong. Everything in RHEL is downstream from CentOS Stream - all of the sources are published there. The only differences are a handful of trademarks. >If the paying customers republish the source, then RedHat closes the account. Even if you ignore the above and think only about the official sources provided direct from the customer portal, it's still not a violation IMO. Because that's not a restriction on how you can use the software you've been provided, it's a restriction on which services you can expect Red Hat to continue providing you, i.e. providing new software in the form of updates. The software you have already been provided continues functioning, it's not like the system gets bricked if your account is closed. GPL only specifies "what are you allowed you do with this piece of software you have been provided with", it doesn't guarantee a future relationship between the provider and receiver. At worst it's a murky area, not a "systematic violation" as you claimed. Also, like, it's a hypothetical thing the user agreement claims could be done, not something that necessarily is done. I don't think there has ever been an actual demonstrated instance of an account being closed because of that.
  - TZubiri 2y ago
    The vanguard thing is a common misconception, I've worked for S&P and we did tracking of ownership. Think of these huge funds as proxies. It's like someone with little finance trading saying most of the internet is owned by cloudflare or RIPE or ARIN.
  - lrvick 2y ago
    Fedora is centrally built/signed and not part of the reproducible builds project. It should not be used for any systems you need to be able to trust. You are much better off sticking with Debian anyway, or looking at Guix for a significant improvement.
  - dismalaf 2y ago
    > vanguard owns a huge chunk of ibm Vanguard and other large institutions own a huge chunk of everything because most investors don't buy stocks directly, they buy them through mutual funds, ETFs, etc...
echelon 2y ago
> TL;DR - Red Hat views the minimum criteria for open source AI as open source-licensed model weights combined with open source software components. That's not open source! I'm going to call this "Wizard of Ozzing". You give away the spectacle of magic tricks, but none of the science and machinery to do it yourself. You're still hiding it all behind fake virtue signalling. Open source in AI is open weights, open training scripts, open inference scripts, open training datasets, and associated helper utilities. Without the science lab, you cannot replicate the science. Weights in a vacuum are not open. It's a trick.
- tbrownaw 2y ago
  You have the preferred form for making modifications, and the relevant permissions to now get in trouble for it. If you actually go look at the open source or few software definitions, that's what they're about - being able to make modifications. Just like an open source software project doesn't need a public record of the rationale for all architectural decisions in order to qualify.
  - nine_k 2y ago
    Open source means that you can build from said source. You can e.g. give away a closed-source game engine with an editor, where you can modify the prebuilt levels, and create your own, to your heart's content. But you can't build it from scratch in a controlled environment, and can't audit it. You also can't do modifications where the level editor interface is not sufficient, e.g. in the renderer. That's not open source, that's freeware. For ML models, the training set is a crucial part of their source.
  - superice 2y ago
    Open source means being able to verify how the sausage is made. Getting a premade sausage and saying “oh you can still eat it and spice it up however you like” isn’t that. I’m happy open weights exist, but it is not truly open source.
  - echelon 2y ago
    Define these terms: - Pretrain - Fine tune - Catastrophic forgetting - Learning rate - Adapter layer If you understand these terms, then you understand why "open weights" are not the same as "open source". "Open weights" are obfuscated and minified freeware.
TZubiri 2y ago
Or you don't understand the matter being discussed. The classical definition of open source (cited in this release as Stallman's GPL definition of the preferred way in which to modify code) kind of breaks for ML programs. This is a good update on the definition of open source from a quite reputable and influential FOSS source. Your presumption that this article isn't sufficiently pure because in addition to being a company that does Free Software, it needs to do so without doing anything that resembles an ad or in any way ensures profitability is pedantic. If we had it your way the only open source software we would have would be mom's basement projects with shoestring budgets.

No real information, just a marketing spiel.

by jmclnx 2y ago

No real information, just a marketing spiel.

ysofunny 2y ago

i mean... it's IBM so what did we really expect?

globalnode 2y ago
I was thinking of trying Fedora (currently using Debian) and this comment made me look up who owns red-hat. ibm now owns red-hat, and apparently vanguard owns a huge chunk of ibm. I wonder how much influence any of the sponsors have over what goes into the os and what direction it takes.
- rat87 2y ago
  Vanguard "owns" a huge chunk of everything. Vanguard runs index funds, most peoples retirements are vanguard buying small shares of an index fund representing all the big companies on the stock exchange
  - TZubiri 2y ago
    Also they simultaneously hold the ownership rights as well as equivalent owenrship liabilities, so they own shit squat in net terms (excpet maybe their management fees).
    - mattkrause 2y ago
      It’s even weirder than that! Vanguard has an odd corporate structure where it’s owned by the funds that it manages, so it’s effectively a co-op owned by its customers.
      - _yb2s 2y ago
        I don’t understand why customer owned co-ops aren’t ubiquitous. Vanguard is amazing- low fees, and great services- they beat all of the competition. I had to call their support line today and it was the most professional customer service I’ve ever experienced.
      - TZubiri 2y ago
        Interesting, that's inline with Bogle's mission for low (0%) mgmt fees. I think it probably doesn't apply to other majority holders like BlackRock though.
  - fny 2y ago
    Vanguard is everyone’s retirement account. Everytime someone buys their S&P 500 ETF, they go buy stocks.
- hedora 2y ago
  You probably missed the news that RedHat decided to systematically violate the GPL: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis... tl;dr: They no longer publish source packages except to paying customers. If the paying customers republish the source, then RedHat closes the account. I'm surprised none of the upstream developers have sued them for violating the license. There's no way I'd trust an organization that was behaving so unethically with control over my machine's package manager. Anyway, I've been pretty happy with Devuan (Debian without SystemD). I find it much more stable than Ubuntu, Arch, Debian, etc., and all the userspace stuff I care about works great.
  - globalnode 2y ago
    Cheers, will check it out.
  - tbrownaw 2y ago
    > I'm surprised none of the upstream developers have sued them for violating the license. Sounds like that implies that they probably actually aren't.
  - dralley 2y ago
    This is wrong. Everything in RHEL is downstream from CentOS Stream - all of the sources are published there. The only differences are a handful of trademarks. >If the paying customers republish the source, then RedHat closes the account. Even if you ignore the above and think only about the official sources provided direct from the customer portal, it's still not a violation IMO. Because that's not a restriction on how you can use the software you've been provided, it's a restriction on which services you can expect Red Hat to continue providing you, i.e. providing new software in the form of updates. The software you have already been provided continues functioning, it's not like the system gets bricked if your account is closed. GPL only specifies "what are you allowed you do with this piece of software you have been provided with", it doesn't guarantee a future relationship between the provider and receiver. At worst it's a murky area, not a "systematic violation" as you claimed. Also, like, it's a hypothetical thing the user agreement claims could be done, not something that necessarily is done. I don't think there has ever been an actual demonstrated instance of an account being closed because of that.
- TZubiri 2y ago
  The vanguard thing is a common misconception, I've worked for S&P and we did tracking of ownership. Think of these huge funds as proxies. It's like someone with little finance trading saying most of the internet is owned by cloudflare or RIPE or ARIN.
- lrvick 2y ago
  Fedora is centrally built/signed and not part of the reproducible builds project. It should not be used for any systems you need to be able to trust. You are much better off sticking with Debian anyway, or looking at Guix for a significant improvement.
- dismalaf 2y ago
  > vanguard owns a huge chunk of ibm Vanguard and other large institutions own a huge chunk of everything because most investors don't buy stocks directly, they buy them through mutual funds, ETFs, etc...

echelon 2y ago

> TL;DR - Red Hat views the minimum criteria for open source AI as open source-licensed model weights combined with open source software components. That's not open source! I'm going to call this "Wizard of Ozzing". You give away the spectacle of magic tricks, but none of the science and machinery to do it yourself. You're still hiding it all behind fake virtue signalling. Open source in AI is open weights, open training scripts, open inference scripts, open training datasets, and associated helper utilities. Without the science lab, you cannot replicate the science. Weights in a vacuum are not open. It's a trick.

tbrownaw 2y ago
You have the preferred form for making modifications, and the relevant permissions to now get in trouble for it. If you actually go look at the open source or few software definitions, that's what they're about - being able to make modifications. Just like an open source software project doesn't need a public record of the rationale for all architectural decisions in order to qualify.
- nine_k 2y ago
  Open source means that you can build from said source. You can e.g. give away a closed-source game engine with an editor, where you can modify the prebuilt levels, and create your own, to your heart's content. But you can't build it from scratch in a controlled environment, and can't audit it. You also can't do modifications where the level editor interface is not sufficient, e.g. in the renderer. That's not open source, that's freeware. For ML models, the training set is a crucial part of their source.
- superice 2y ago
  Open source means being able to verify how the sausage is made. Getting a premade sausage and saying “oh you can still eat it and spice it up however you like” isn’t that. I’m happy open weights exist, but it is not truly open source.
- echelon 2y ago
  Define these terms: - Pretrain - Fine tune - Catastrophic forgetting - Learning rate - Adapter layer If you understand these terms, then you understand why "open weights" are not the same as "open source". "Open weights" are obfuscated and minified freeware.

TZubiri 2y ago

Or you don't understand the matter being discussed. The classical definition of open source (cited in this release as Stallman's GPL definition of the preferred way in which to modify code) kind of breaks for ML programs. This is a good update on the definition of open source from a quite reputable and influential FOSS source. Your presumption that this article isn't sufficiently pure because in addition to being a company that does Free Software, it needs to do so without doing anything that resembles an ad or in any way ensures profitability is pedantic. If we had it your way the only open source software we would have would be mom's basement projects with shoestring budgets.