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John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

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Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#301

Post by GuB-42 »

bloblaw wrote: post #139
skrebbel wrote: post #91

This is because Carmack doesn't really do OSS, he just does code dumps and tacks on a license ("a gift"). That's of course great and awesome and super nice, but he's not been painstakingly and thanklessly maintaining some key linux component for the last 20 years or something like that. It's an entirely different thing; he made a thing, sold it, and then when he couldn't sell more of it, gave it away. That's nice! Bu…

This sounds to me like the "No True Scotsman" argument. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman I break down what you said as: "Sure, he's released code with an open-source license, but that's not real open source in the sense that matters." I happen to disagree. OSS is OSS. AGPL is OSS. MIT is Open Source. Unlicense is OSS.

The thing is, he is not working in open source.

He only released his software as open source when there was no more money to be made with it. The idea being that even if it is of no use for him, is could be of use to someone else. In a sense, it is crazy to think of such actions as generous when it is what everyone should have done, but since being an asshole is the rule, then breaking that rule is indeed generous.

To me, working in open source means that your work goes to open source projects right now, not 10 years later when your software is obsolete and have been amortized. The difference matters because you are actually trying to make money here, and the protection offered by the licence you picked may be important to your business model.

John Carmack is making gifts, which is nice, but he wasn't paid to make gifts, he was paid to write proprietary software, so he worked in proprietary software, not open source. On one occasion, he gave away one of his Ferraris, which is, again, nice, but that doesn't make him a car dealer.

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#302

Post by SouthSeaDude »

skrebbel wrote: post #91

This is because Carmack doesn't really do OSS, he just does code dumps and tacks on a license ("a gift"). That's of course great and awesome and super nice, but he's not been painstakingly and thanklessly maintaining some key linux component for the last 20 years or something like that. It's an entirely different thing; he made a thing, sold it, and then when he couldn't sell more of it, gave it away. That's nice! Bu…

> It's an entirely different thing; he made a thing, sold it, and then when he couldn't sell more of it, gave it away.

He didn't have to give it away, but he did, and for that I thank him

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#303

Post by dismalaf »

skrebbel wrote: post #91

This is because Carmack doesn't really do OSS, he just does code dumps and tacks on a license ("a gift"). That's of course great and awesome and super nice, but he's not been painstakingly and thanklessly maintaining some key linux component for the last 20 years or something like that. It's an entirely different thing; he made a thing, sold it, and then when he couldn't sell more of it, gave it away. That's nice! Bu…

Open source is literally just releasing the code under an OSS license.

Any additional meaning or steps isn't open source, it's something else...

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#304

Post by SlinkyOnStairs »

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #163
SlinkyOnStairs wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even a small % of layoffs of the US white collar work force will crash the economy, as our economy is extremely levered. A major economic crash as the only consequence would be the good ending. The real societal risk here is that software development is not just a field of primarily white men, it was one of the last few jobs that could reliably get one homeownership & an (upper) middle class life. And the current U…

I totally agree. I've written about this topic a lot on this site, probably most recently here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47115597 The US is built on-top of a high value service economy. And what we're doing is allowing a couple companies to come in, devalue US service labor, and capture a small fraction of the prior value for themselves on top of models trained on copyrighted material without permission.…

> I honestly don't think a lot of executives even know how much they're shooting themselves in the foot because they seem unable to think beyond the first order.

It's just so depressing. You see Microsoft and Google's CEOs being completely reckless with investment & the economy. And it's just ... HAVE THEY NOT LOOKED INTO A MIRROR? DO THEY NOT REALIZE THEY ARE THE FALL GUYS?!

Nevermind how the vast majority of major CEOs can't even run a business anymore. An old boys club of morons running the entire economy.

> And they could ensure through that advocacy for labor that we see the happiest ending with respect to rolling out LLMs.

It's just more of the same old "Software dev doesn't need unions". The top 1% always think they're pointless because they made it without unions.

> Unfortunately I don't really believe labor has much teeth anymore, and tech will wake up too late to do anything about it.

Amusingly, I hold the opposite sentiment.

Labor isn't going anywhere. These executives and managers can barely tie their own shoelaces. Big Tech and the current startup scene are laughably dysfunctional.

The moment the economic recession really starts to set in, everyone's gonna try to cut down their SaaS spending. Then, the days of being able to shit out some (AI or not) slop and charge double price will be well and truly over.

Once software firms have to compete on quality again, labor is going to be more important than ever.

AI may not even be meaningfully involved in software dev. To break even at the API prices would require charging on the order of 1-2 thousand dollars, per month, per seat. Factoring in long term training costs will will make that several times worse.

... Before we consider that we're probably heading into an oil crisis making energy and computer hardware much more expensive.

I doubt employers are going to pay the $10,000/month/seat required to make AI profitable for everyone in the supply chain. Certainly not during the worst recession this side of WWII.

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#305

Post by dismalaf »

layer8 wrote: post #152
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is because Carmack doesn't really do OSS, he just does code dumps and tacks on a license ("a gift"). That is, in fact, OSS. Open source does not mean, and has never meant, ongoing development nor development with the community.

That’s just incorrect. “Open source” can mean the licensing as well as the development model [0]. It certainly has been associated with the development model since The Cathedral and the Bazaar [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software_developme... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar

The "development model" of open source is that one person code dumps, another takes, changes it then dumps it, another picks up the copy with the changes, changes it again, and so on. Sometimes it finds it's way back.

A bazaar is a chaotic market with a million vendors, not anything remotely cooperative. The Cathedral and the Bazaar is meant to convey the idea that OSS code develops without central organization, through endless forking and cloning.

The bazaar model definitely isn't the cooperation and vibes model that the HN crowd thinks it is...

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#306

Post by wat10000 »

skeledrew wrote: post #115
radlad wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably you are licensing your code as MIT or a similar license. Not all code is licensed that way. Some open-source code had strings attached , but AI launders the code and makes them moot.

If you want to attach strings which involve restricting access, open source is not the way to go.

By far the most popular strings involve restricting restricting access. That is, viral licenses which require derived works to also be open source.

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#307

Post by emigre »

toast0 wrote: post #24
OSaMaBiNLoGiN wrote: post #4

I think one of the more prominent issues folks take with mass training on OSS is that the companies doing it are now profiting for having done it. In his follow-up post he talks about him open sourcing old games as a gift, and he doesn't much care how people receive that gift, just that they do. He doesn't acknowledge that Anthropic, OpenAI, etc, are profiting while the original authors are not. The original authors…

I'm no Carmack, but everything I've released as open source is a gift with no strings (unless it was to a project with a restrictive license). A gift with strings isn't exactly a gift. If you take my gift and profit, it doesn't hurt me, there were no strings. Your users presumably benefit from the software I wrote, unless you're using it for evil, but I don't have enough clout to use an only IBM may use it for evil l…

Most open source licenses have strings attached, the terms of the licence say what those “strings” are. Like requiring attribution.

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#308

Post by nickff »

layer8 wrote: post #185
nickff wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Appending ‘development’ seems like a significant departure from ‘vanilla’ “Open Source” to me, and wouldn’t all development be ‘closed-source’ at least between commits, if not between pull requests?

See https://opensource.org/about/history-of-the-open-source-init... under ‘Coining “Open Source”’: The conferees believed the pragmatic, business-case grounds that had motivated Netscape to release their code illustrated a valuable way to engage with potential software users and developers, and convince them to create and improve source code by participating in an engaged community. The conferees also believed that i…

The 'bazaar' system is a wonderful methodology, but there is a place for the 'cathedral', and it is no less open source.

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#309

Post by SllX »

nickff wrote: post #280
SllX wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well no, it’s about legally gating the ability to copy so the original author doesn’t have to compete in the same market to sell his own book with every other bloke with a printing press and a copy of the book. Everything else is an addendum.

That may be the reason copyright came to be, but it's much more expansive now.

That is still the meat and potatoes of copyright law.

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#310

Post by SllX »

joquarky wrote: post #289
SllX wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well no, it’s about legally gating the ability to copy so the original author doesn’t have to compete in the same market to sell his own book with every other bloke with a printing press and a copy of the book. Everything else is an addendum.

No, it's to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. The current implementation has recently become obsolete.

Don’t confuse the social justification with the actual purpose of copyright law just because it’s written into the US Constitution that way. America didn’t invent copyright law.
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