3 ms·

I’m not sure if the analogy is yours, but the scribe note really struck a chord with me. I’m not a professionally trained SWE (I’m a scientist who does enginee

by j_bum 6mo ago

I’m not sure if the analogy is yours, but the scribe note really struck a chord with me. I’m not a professionally trained SWE (I’m a scientist who does engineering work). LLMs have really accelerated my ability to build, ideate, and understand systems in a way that I could only loosely gain from sometimes grumpy but mostly kind senior engineers in overcrowded chat rooms. The legality of all of this is dubious, though, per the parent. I GPL licensed my FOSS scientific software because I wanted it to help advance biomedical research. Not because I wanted it to help a big corp get rich. But then again, maybe code like mine is what is holding these models back lol.

TeMPOraL 6mo ago
Sharing for advancing humanity / benefit of society, and megacorps getting rich off it, is not either-or. On the contrary, megacorps are in part how the benefit to society materializes. After all, it's megacorps that make and distribute the equipment and the software stacks I am using to write code on, that you are using to do your research on, etc. I find the whole line of thinking, "I won't share my stuff because then a megacorp may use it without paying me the fractional picobuck I'm entitled to", to be a strong case of Dog in the Manger mindset. And I meant that even before LLM exploded, back when people were wringing their hands about Elasticsearch being used by Amazon, back in 2021 or so. Sharing is sharing. One can't say "oh I'm sharing this for anyone to benefit", and then upon seeing someone using it to make money, say "oh but not like that!!". Or rather, one can say, but then they're just lying about having shared the thing. "OSS but not for megacorps/aicorps" is just proprietary software. Which is perfectly fine thing to work on; what's not fine is lying about it being open.
- graemep 6mo ago
  > On the contrary, megacorps are in part how the benefit to society materializes. That would be true if they were the product of a genuine competitive market. In fact their strength is in eliminating competition, erecting barriers to entry, manipulating regulation, and maintaining the status quo. > "OSS but not for megacorps/aicorps" Who is advocating that? People just want everyone to stick to the terms of the licences.
- 3form 6mo ago
  LLMs are one thing, but when you bring ES in AWS example, as outlined in the article, the problem is not the software being used; it's being _made proprietary_. It's about free and open software remaining free and open. Especially to the end user.
- lentil_soup 6mo ago
  > "OSS but not for megacorps/aicorps" is just proprietary software why? it's not like it's binary. It could well be that it's open source but can't be used by a company of X size. I'm not a lawyer but why couldn't a license have that clause? I would still class that as being open, for some definition of open

by j_bum 6mo ago

TeMPOraL 6mo ago

Sharing for advancing humanity / benefit of society, and megacorps getting rich off it, is not either-or. On the contrary, megacorps are in part how the benefit to society materializes. After all, it's megacorps that make and distribute the equipment and the software stacks I am using to write code on, that you are using to do your research on, etc. I find the whole line of thinking, "I won't share my stuff because then a megacorp may use it without paying me the fractional picobuck I'm entitled to", to be a strong case of Dog in the Manger mindset. And I meant that even before LLM exploded, back when people were wringing their hands about Elasticsearch being used by Amazon, back in 2021 or so. Sharing is sharing. One can't say "oh I'm sharing this for anyone to benefit", and then upon seeing someone using it to make money, say "oh but not like that!!". Or rather, one can say, but then they're just lying about having shared the thing. "OSS but not for megacorps/aicorps" is just proprietary software. Which is perfectly fine thing to work on; what's not fine is lying about it being open.

graemep 6mo ago
> On the contrary, megacorps are in part how the benefit to society materializes. That would be true if they were the product of a genuine competitive market. In fact their strength is in eliminating competition, erecting barriers to entry, manipulating regulation, and maintaining the status quo. > "OSS but not for megacorps/aicorps" Who is advocating that? People just want everyone to stick to the terms of the licences.
3form 6mo ago
LLMs are one thing, but when you bring ES in AWS example, as outlined in the article, the problem is not the software being used; it's being _made proprietary_. It's about free and open software remaining free and open. Especially to the end user.
lentil_soup 6mo ago
> "OSS but not for megacorps/aicorps" is just proprietary software why? it's not like it's binary. It could well be that it's open source but can't be used by a company of X size. I'm not a lawyer but why couldn't a license have that clause? I would still class that as being open, for some definition of open