Elon Musk sues Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and OpenAI [pdf]

This is a poor analogy, a better one would be nuclear physics. An expert in nuclear physics can develop positively impactful energy generation methods or very damaging nuclear weapons.

It's not because of arcane secrets that so few nations have nuclear weapons, all you need is a budget, time and brilliant physicists and engineers. The reason we don't have more is largely down to surveillance, economics, challenge of reliable payload delivery, security assurances, agreements and various logistical challenges.

Most countries are open and transparent about their nuclear efforts due to the diplomatic advantages. There are also methods to trace and detect secret nuclear tests and critical supply chains can be monitored. Countries who violate these norms can face anything from heavy economic sanctions and isolation to sabotage of research efforts. On the technical side, having safe and reliable launch capacity is arguably as much if not more of a challenge than the bomb itself. Logistical issues include mass manufacture (merely having capacity only paints a target on your back with no real gains) and safe storage. There are a great many reasons why it is simply not worth going forward with nuclear weapons. This calculus changes however, if a country has cause for fear for their continued existence, as is presently the case for some Eastern European countries.

> 113. OpenAI’s conduct could have seismic implications for Silicon Valley and, if allowed to stand, could represent a paradigm shift for technology start-ups. It is important to reflect on what has transpired here: a non-profit startup has collected tens of millions of dollars in contributions for the express purpose of developing AGI technology for public benefit, and shortly before achieving the very milestone that the company was created to achieve, the company has become a closed, forprofit partner of the world’s largest corporation, thereby personally enriching the Defendants. If this business model were valid, it would radically redefine how venture capitalism is practiced in California and beyond. Rather than start out as a for-profit entity from the outset, “smart” investors would establish non-profits, use pre-tax donations to fund research and development, and then once their technology had been developed and proven, would slide the resulting IP assets into a new forprofit venture to enrich themselves and their profit-maximizing corporate partners. That is not supposed to be how the law works in California or anywhere else in this country, and this should not be the first Court to hold otherwise.

> 114. To further understand why this is important, if OpenAI’s new business model is valid, for every dollar that an investor “invests” by contributing to a non-profit, that investor gets approximately 50 cents back from the state and federal governments in the form of reduced income taxes, so the net cost to them of each $1 of investment is only 50 cents. However, with OpenAI’s new business model, they get the same “for profit” upside as those who invest the conventional way in for-profit corporations and thus do not get an immediate tax write off, financed by the government and, ultimately, the public. From an investment perspective, competing against an entity employing the new OpenAI business model would be like playing a game of basketball where the other team’s baskets are worth twice as many points. If this Court validates OpenAI’s conduct here, any start-up seeking to remain competitive in Silicon Valley would essentially be required to follow this OpenAI playbook, which would become standard operating procedure for start-ups to the detriment of legitimate non-profits, the government’s tax coffers, and ultimately the people of California and beyond. Notably, OpenAI’s for-profit arm was recently valued at nearly $80 billion.

I've always wondered about this. I briefly worked at a non-profit that turned over into a for profit once it found traction, and to my knowledge, the donors didn't get anything back. I learned a lesson too, taking a pay cut to work somewhere mission focused and not beholden to profit maximization. Not going to make that mistake again.

Whatever his reason may be (like resentment for jumping off the ship too soon and missing out, or standing in for humanity), I like what I read in the sense that it contains all the stuff that needs to be spoken about publicly, and the court seems to be the optimal place for this.

It feels like Microsoft is misusing the partnership only to block other companies from having access to the IP. They said they don't need the partnership, that they have got all what they need, so there would be no need to have the partnership.

If this is the way Microsoft misuses partnerships, I don't feel good about Mistral's new partnership, even if it means unlimited computing resources for them and still have the freedom to open source their models.

Not seeing Mistral Large as an open source model now has a bitter taste to it.

I also wonder if this lawsuit was the reason for him checking out Windows 11.

IANAL but I don't think a court case hinges whether OpenAI is actually open; neither open-source nor closed-source are directly required to fulfill the charter. I think it would be about the extent to which the for-profit's actions and strategy have contradicted the non-profit's goals.