Comment by theturtletalks
3 days ago
Open-source is also altruistic. If DeepSeek does become self-serving once they get the top spot, it doesn’t take away from the altruistic contributions that they made towards open models.
3 days ago
Open-source is also altruistic. If DeepSeek does become self-serving once they get the top spot, it doesn’t take away from the altruistic contributions that they made towards open models.
> Open-source is also altruistic
Contributing to it might not necessarily be. Most open source development is funded by large companies after all and from their perspective it can function as a cost saving measure. Allowing them to focus on their core products and removing the possibility of their rivals from getting a competitive advantage due to having a superior low level stack under their product.
Which is why open source is so successful in areas where software is a cost-center but mostly failed for consumer products (since spending resources on them would actually be altruistic unlike e.g. Linux kernel development)
altruism is not discernable from the outside
any altruistic act can be perceived as self serving
And ultimately the motivation for those contributions just doesn’t matter, except to those who like to anthropomorphize company and argue about their souls.
People who donated to OpenAI in its early years might disagree on that.
Or if they want to do anything close to predicting what they will do in the future, like curious and interested humans tend to want to do.
No parent is right. The core root driver of the world is capitalism, open source exists downstream of that.
Software engineers need money to survive. If they exclusively work on open source stuff where are they getting money from to survive? Follow the money trail… even a donation… eventually it leads to an incentive based source or action.
> If they exclusively work on open source stuff where are they getting money from to survive?
From open source. You can earn money from open source. Open source is not opposed to capitalism, idk where you got that idea.
> Open source is not opposed to capitalism
You’re right. One of its big uses is for big companies to destroy the ability of individual developers or small companies to make a living selling software. It’s also used to harm larger competitors whose revenue depends on some non open source software. Essentially, open source is the new “dumping”.
That’s not to say open source is bad. But in a capitalist context, it’s certainly a very double-edged sword.
Young blood, allow me to explain.
I said open source is derivative to capitalism. Meaning open source cannot exist without capitalism. I never said they oppose each other.
Second I said you need to follow the money trail. Money given to people who work on open source comes from non-open source places.
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> If they exclusively work on open source stuff where are they getting money from to survive?
These are orthogonal. One can have a paid job while contributing to open source for entirely altruistic reasons.
> Follow the money trail… even a donation… eventually it leads to an incentive based source or action.
BS. Humans do things for altruistic reasons devoid of individual reward all the time.
I, myself, maintain multiple OSS projects entirely for fun and with the hope that others will find it useful. That's it, that's all. I also donate entirely anonymously to charities simply because I believe others deserve support and dignity.
This form of cold, American libertarianism you espouse is pure poison in the body politic, both in this US and globally. It degrades all of human interaction to transactions. Its no wonder that the US is where sociopaths like Zuck were birthed.
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