4 ms·

The vast majority of people couldn't care less about open source

jonlucc 2y ago
If you're paying $200/month for something I can do with open source software and $10/month of compute, why wouldn't I offer you the service for $100/month? And then someone offer it for $50? Not everyone has to know about, understand, or use open source solutions for it to open the field.
- bobxmax 2y ago
  If you can do a $200/mo service for $10/mo, the closed source will reduce their prices to $15/mo and beat you This is just a weird dichotomy you're introducing. Open source will introduce price pressure as any competition will - that doesn't mean you won't have a monopoly.
  - dauhak 2y ago
    If you have virtually no pricing power and have to drop your $200/mo to $15/mo that's a big deal if your $300bn valuation is implying that not happening, which is what OP's point is about Idk what you mean by saying this doesn't preclude a monopoly - having your pricing power eroded by competition is kinda one of the key features of what a monopolistic market isn't
    - bobxmax 2y ago
      Not at all. Monopolies don't imply an anti-rigid price curve. In fact, monopolies almost never have that. A monopoly means a company has enough leverage to corner and disproportionately own the market. This is entirely possible (and usually the case) even with significant pricing pressure.
  - gopher_space 2y ago
    I think you're both missing a bigger picture. How many of these services can now be replicated in-house by a single developer? Which part of the service actually costs money once that dev deconstructs the process? Feels like I won't be paying for anything that isn't real-time. And that any time delay I can introduce in my process will come with massive savings. Picture hiding the loading of loot info behind a treasure chest opening animation in a game, except that time difference means you can pull all the work in-house. Openrouter.ai seems like a step in the right direction but I'd want to do all their calculations myself as well as factor in local/existing gear in a way they don't.
- Mekoloto 2y ago
  Right now you can't run it that cheap at home. You need to pay energy bill, do the update/upgrade and you need to build a LLM rig. Nvidias Digits Project could be very interesting, but this box will cost 3k. We are a lot closer to running it at home than i assumed we would but plenty of people prefer SaaS over doing stuff themselves.
guax 2y ago
They don't seem to care about Ai either. The vast majority of people care about the value they're getting, companies care abut open source because its usually free. I don't think we expect a company to exist solely making a proprietary web server anymore and be a behemoth of 300B. OpenAi might end up at the same model as Nginx or Docker if they don't pivot or find a different model.
nkozyra 2y ago
That's true, but if someone sells you a one-time-purchase box/gadget/phone that will do a snapshot SOTA work and not cost you $20-$200/mo in subscriptions, a lot of people would be in. Right now the average person has to go through a vendor with a web app, there's not a lot of room for the public to explore. Things could change in a hurry.

If you're paying $200/month for something I can do with open source software and $10/month of compute, why wouldn't I offer you the service for $100/month? And then someone offer it for $50? Not everyone has to know about, understand, or use open source solutions for it to open the field.

bobxmax 2y ago
If you can do a $200/mo service for $10/mo, the closed source will reduce their prices to $15/mo and beat you This is just a weird dichotomy you're introducing. Open source will introduce price pressure as any competition will - that doesn't mean you won't have a monopoly.
- dauhak 2y ago
  If you have virtually no pricing power and have to drop your $200/mo to $15/mo that's a big deal if your $300bn valuation is implying that not happening, which is what OP's point is about Idk what you mean by saying this doesn't preclude a monopoly - having your pricing power eroded by competition is kinda one of the key features of what a monopolistic market isn't
  - bobxmax 2y ago
    Not at all. Monopolies don't imply an anti-rigid price curve. In fact, monopolies almost never have that. A monopoly means a company has enough leverage to corner and disproportionately own the market. This is entirely possible (and usually the case) even with significant pricing pressure.
- gopher_space 2y ago
  I think you're both missing a bigger picture. How many of these services can now be replicated in-house by a single developer? Which part of the service actually costs money once that dev deconstructs the process? Feels like I won't be paying for anything that isn't real-time. And that any time delay I can introduce in my process will come with massive savings. Picture hiding the loading of loot info behind a treasure chest opening animation in a game, except that time difference means you can pull all the work in-house. Openrouter.ai seems like a step in the right direction but I'd want to do all their calculations myself as well as factor in local/existing gear in a way they don't.
Mekoloto 2y ago
Right now you can't run it that cheap at home. You need to pay energy bill, do the update/upgrade and you need to build a LLM rig. Nvidias Digits Project could be very interesting, but this box will cost 3k. We are a lot closer to running it at home than i assumed we would but plenty of people prefer SaaS over doing stuff themselves.

guax 2y ago

They don't seem to care about Ai either. The vast majority of people care about the value they're getting, companies care abut open source because its usually free. I don't think we expect a company to exist solely making a proprietary web server anymore and be a behemoth of 300B. OpenAi might end up at the same model as Nginx or Docker if they don't pivot or find a different model.

nkozyra 2y ago

That's true, but if someone sells you a one-time-purchase box/gadget/phone that will do a snapshot SOTA work and not cost you $20-$200/mo in subscriptions, a lot of people would be in. Right now the average person has to go through a vendor with a web app, there's not a lot of room for the public to explore. Things could change in a hurry.