Open source AI is the path forward

I see it as a new race to build the personal computer (PC) all over again. I hope we can apply the lessons learned and can jump into open source to speed up development and democratize ai for all. We know how Microsoft played dirty in the early days of the PC revolution.

How does that change anything about my comment? what does "available weights" change about the system being closed source? additionally, they have the developers, the second they figure out a way to achieve AGI or something close to it they'll take it closed source, this is just outsourcing maintenance and small tweaks.

For some advocates, sure. I was there, too — although at the beginning of my career and not deeply involved in most licensing discussions until the founding of Mozilla (where I argued against the GNU GPL and was generally pleased with the result of the MPL). However, from ~1990, I remember sharing some code where I "more or less" made my code public domain but recommended people consider the GNU GPL as part of the README (I don't have the source code available, so I don't recall).

Your characterization is quit easily refutable, because at the time that OSI was founded, there was already an explosion of possible licenses and RMS and other GNUnatics were making lots of noise about GNU/Linux and trying to be as maximalist as possible while presenting any choice other than the GNU GPL as "against freedom".

This certainly would not have held well with people who were using the MIT Licence or BSD licences (created around the same time as the GNU GPL v1), who believed (and continue to believe) that there were options other than a restrictive viral licence‡. Yes, some of the people involved vilified the "free software principles", but there were also GNU "advocates" who were making RMS look tame with their wording (I recall someone telling me to enjoy "software slavery" because I preferred licences other than the GNU GPL).

The "Free Software" advocates were pretending that the goals of their licence were the only goals that should matter for all authors and consumers of software. That is not and never has been the case, so it is unsurprising that there was a bit of reaction to such extremism.

OSI and the open source label were a move to make things easier for corporations to accept and understand by providing (a) a clear unifying definition, and (b) a set of licences and guidelines for knowing what licenses did what and the risks and obligations they presented to people who used software under those licences.

‡ Don't @ me on this, because both the virality and restrictiveness are features of the GNU GPL. If it weren't for the nonsense in the preamble, it would be a good licence. As it is, it is an effective if rampantly misrepresented licence.

AI is not a "complement" of a social network in the way Spolsky defines the term.

> A complement is a product that you usually buy together with another product. Gas and cars are complements. Computer hardware is a classic complement of computer operating systems. And babysitters are a complement of dinner at fine restaurants. In a small town, when the local five star restaurant has a two-for-one Valentine’s day special, the local babysitters double their rates. (Actually, the nine-year-olds get roped into early service.)

> All else being equal, demand for a product increases when the prices of its complements decrease.

Smart phones ar a complement of Instagram. VR headsets are a complement of the metaverse. AI could be a component of a social network, but it's not a complement.

> gargantuan investment

it's a bigger investment, but it's an investment which will pay dividends for decades. with a compute cluster, the government is taking on an asset in the form of the cluster but also liabilities in the form of operations and administration.

with a fab, the government takes on either a promise of lower taxes for N years or hands over a bag of cash. after that they're clear of it. the company operating the fab will be responsible for the risks and on-going expenses.

on top of that...

> thousand of staff

the company will employ/attract even more top talent, each of whom will pay taxes and eventually go on to found related companies or teach the next generation or what have you. not to mention the risk reduction that comes with on-shoring something as critical to national security and the economy as a fab.

a public-access compute cluster isn't a bad idea, but it probably makes more sense to fund/operate it in similar PPP model. non-profit consortium of universities and business pool resources to plan, build, and operate it, government recognizes it as a public good and chips in a significant amount of money to help.