Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook open-sources deep-learning modules

research.facebook.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 76 posts

Re: Facebook open-sources deep-learning modules

#51

Post by vonmoltke »

DannyBee wrote: post #43
jawns wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a link to the patent clause: https://github.com/facebook/fbcunn/blob/master/PATENTS DannyBee, I'm having a hard time envisioning what sort of scenario might trigger this, and what the repercussions might be. Any chance you could explain?

Do you mean the first part, or the validity provision? as a reply points out, it is incredibly broad. Assuming you mean the first part (the validity provision seems "obviously bad" to me), let's lay out some scenarios: You make your important software dependent on this software. Congrats, facebook can now sue you with impunity because you can't afford to lose these patents. Worse, the fact that they have given you a…

> You make your important software dependent on this software. Congrats, facebook can now sue you with impunity because you can't afford to lose these patents.

I have been rattling the clause jawns posted around in my head, and I cannot see this. I agree that the clause is onerous and I would not incorporate software that had such a clause into one of my products without a backup plan. I do not see how this gives Facebook the ability to sue anyone with impunity. The clause applies to alleging patent infringement BY Facebook or its subsidiaries (i.e., you are suing them) or if Facebook is specifically suing you for patent infringement. Clause section b only applies if your defense is based on invalidating a Facebook patent; saying, "We don't actually infringe that" does not trigger this clause.

Re: Facebook open-sources deep-learning modules

#52

Post by muser »

technologia wrote: post #21

We've been using Torch for a while at work, really appreciate Facebook doing this. Some of us had a hard time adjusting to Lua, but it was well worth it.

Could you provide some steps how you could bring everyone one board? We are still having python/R migration issues.

Re: Facebook open-sources deep-learning modules

#53

Post by frabcus »

jawns wrote: post #34
DannyBee wrote: post #27

Sadly, this has facebook's new, horrible patent clause. For those who aren't aware, it says 1. If facebook sues you, and you counterclaim over patents (whether about software or not), you will lose rights under all these patent grants. So essentially you can't defend yourself. This is different than the typical apache style patent grant, which instead would say "if you sue me over patents in apache licensed software…

Here's a link to the patent clause: https://github.com/facebook/fbcunn/blob/master/PATENTS DannyBee, I'm having a hard time envisioning what sort of scenario might trigger this, and what the repercussions might be. Any chance you could explain?

How can they claim this text file applies?

There is also a file with the industry-standard name LICENSE (https://github.com/facebook/fbcunn/blob/master/LICENSE), with a standard looking BSD license in it.

Surely somebody using it could claim that was the file that applied, and this other non-standard whimsical "PATENTS" file was irrelevant?

Or can people just bury random licenses deep inside copyrighted works, and expect them to apply?

Re: Facebook open-sources deep-learning modules

#54

Post by psykotic »

chubot wrote: post #50
technologia wrote: post #21

We've been using Torch for a while at work, really appreciate Facebook doing this. Some of us had a hard time adjusting to Lua, but it was well worth it.

I'm curious what your team experience was with Lua. IIRC, Lua is even more liberal than Python in that if you mistype a variable name, it will silently give you 'nil' rather than throwing an exception. Also, the prototype system is a little wonky. It seems overly flexible and makes you do too much work yourself, which would make it hard on a large team all getting started at once. If Torch gets popular I wonder if so…

> IIRC, Lua is even more liberal than Python in that if you mistype a variable name, it will silently give you 'nil' rather than throwing an exception.

Like most things in Lua, that is easy to customize. You can just add an __index metamethod to environment tables. There are various 'strict' modules which do just that.

Re: Facebook open-sources deep-learning modules

#55

Post by bhouston »

raverbashing wrote: post #38
amelius wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The software runs on Nvidia hardware. Not sure if all their servers are fitted with one or more GPU cards... I think it is more likely that this is just research software.

Well, it depends, you can definitely have servers with NVidia hardware, and you don't need to have all of them with it. (Amazon offers GPGPU servers on EC2 for example)

Amazon only offers very costly Tesla and Quadro cards on their GPGPUs. Super expensive. For scale, if you do not need the extra memory on the Tesla cards, what you want is commodity NVIDIA GeForce cards that are a fraction of the cost.

Re: Facebook open-sources deep-learning modules

#56

Post by kylebrown »

ghayes wrote: post #13
vonnik wrote: post #10

This is a recruiting move. Facebook is building its DL team, and to do that, they need to grow the community using their tools.

And yet we should applaud the move. I will always appreciate a company moving proprietary technology into the public sphere.

Now they just need to release the datasets as well. The datasets are far more important than the algos.

Re: Facebook open-sources deep-learning modules

#57

Post by DannyBee »

vonmoltke wrote: post #51
DannyBee wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean the first part, or the validity provision? as a reply points out, it is incredibly broad. Assuming you mean the first part (the validity provision seems "obviously bad" to me), let's lay out some scenarios: You make your important software dependent on this software. Congrats, facebook can now sue you with impunity because you can't afford to lose these patents. Worse, the fact that they have given you a…

> You make your important software dependent on this software. Congrats, facebook can now sue you with impunity because you can't afford to lose these patents. I have been rattling the clause jawns posted around in my head, and I cannot see this. I agree that the clause is onerous and I would not incorporate software that had such a clause into one of my products without a backup plan. I do not see how this gives Fac…

First, The only thing most companies have they could use against facebook, if facebook were to sue them, are patents.

Second, "saying, "We don't actually infringe that" does not trigger this clause."

This is false. Such a claim is a claim that facebook's patent claim is unenforceable against you. This falls directly into the "unenforceable" language.

Also note that you claim it requires lawsuits. Actually, as worded, it does not.

In fact, it says " The license granted hereunder will terminate, automatically and without notice, for anyone that makes any claim (including by filing any lawsuit, assertion or other action) alleging". It specifically says "assertion or other action". It does not require lawsuits.

So arguably, just by posting a blog post that says facebook's patent is invalid, you'd lose rights, because that is an assertion that a right in a patent of facebook's is invalid.

If it's not meant to cover this, it's not at all clear what the difference between "an assertion" and "a lawsuit" are supposed to be in the examples, or what "other action" would constitute.

Re: Facebook open-sources deep-learning modules

#58

Post by mcintyre1994 »

DannyBee wrote: post #57
vonmoltke wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You make your important software dependent on this software. Congrats, facebook can now sue you with impunity because you can't afford to lose these patents. I have been rattling the clause jawns posted around in my head, and I cannot see this. I agree that the clause is onerous and I would not incorporate software that had such a clause into one of my products without a backup plan. I do not see how this gives Fac…

First, The only thing most companies have they could use against facebook, if facebook were to sue them, are patents. Second, "saying, "We don't actually infringe that" does not trigger this clause." This is false. Such a claim is a claim that facebook's patent claim is unenforceable against you. This falls directly into the "unenforceable" language. Also note that you claim it requires lawsuits. Actually, as worded,…

Presumably their "assertion or other action" could cover things like the patents stack exchange too? If they make one of those common terrible patents, and you point out prior art somewhere public like that, you'd seem to lose all these licenses.

Re: Facebook open-sources deep-learning modules

#59

Post by mcintyre1994 »

frabcus wrote: post #53
jawns wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a link to the patent clause: https://github.com/facebook/fbcunn/blob/master/PATENTS DannyBee, I'm having a hard time envisioning what sort of scenario might trigger this, and what the repercussions might be. Any chance you could explain?

How can they claim this text file applies? There is also a file with the industry-standard name LICENSE ( https://github.com/facebook/fbcunn/blob/master/LICENSE ), with a standard looking BSD license in it. Surely somebody using it could claim that was the file that applied, and this other non-standard whimsical "PATENTS" file was irrelevant? Or can people just bury random licenses deep inside copyrighted works, and…

Does that BSD license grant a patent license though? It doesn't seem to. Otherwise arguing their "PATENTS" file doesn't apply means you have no right to any patents exercised by the software anyway.

All it does is grant rights, albeit flimsy ones that can be taken away in stupid circumstances. There's no real use arguing it doesn't count because then you're just saying you never had those right and are infringing in exactly the same way.

Re: Facebook open-sources deep-learning modules

#60

Post by Houshalter »

amelius wrote: post #37
raverbashing wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically everything in FB has one main goal: Ads Secondary goals might be: Spam detection and extracting info from the graph/pictures, etc FB identify people from your Social Graph in Pictures, for example

The software runs on Nvidia hardware. Not sure if all their servers are fitted with one or more GPU cards... I think it is more likely that this is just research software.

Deep neural networks are usually trained on GPUs which can provide a huge speed up, and is much cheaper. However they can easily be run on CPUs after being trained. I don't see why they wouldn't have access to GPUs in production though.
Post reply on HN