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Comment by handfuloflight

21 hours ago

Analogy doesn't apply to this case, as you are paying for the chair upfront but not paying for the model weights upfront.

9 comments

handfuloflight

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1dom  20 hours ago

The only reason my chair manufacturer would be entitled to the proceeds of my success whilst I was in their chair is if I hadn't already paid them for the work they put into making the chair for me. Even then, why would my success with their product have anything to do with how much they can charge me for their labour? What other things work like that outside of the modern tech world?

Seriously, look around you, pick a thing, imagine a world where the price you paid for that thing hinged on your personal individual success with that thing.

edit: to clarify, my point is why can't we pay for the model weights up front for offline models? Why would we continue paying for things we don't want/need anymore, like updates for offline software that does it's job fine?

  • Muromec  18 hours ago

    >The only reason my chair manufacturer would be entitled to the proceeds of my success whilst I was in their chair is if I hadn't already paid them for the work they put into making the chair for me

    Unless you could lease a chair and limit your cost to some finite number (which is higher then upfront cost), because chairs are easy to get by. You could also buy very cheap chairs from China for example and rent them by the hour (or that's what I heard).

    The actual reason to why is -- because they can make you do it.

    >What other things work like that outside of the modern tech world?

    taxes

  • ricardobeat  18 hours ago

    > look around you, pick a thing, imagine a world where the price you paid for that thing hinged on your personal individual success with that thing

    YCombinator. Unreal Engine. CryEngine. FMOD. Steam, App stores in general. Qt.

    + 90% of enterprise software that charges per seat / user.

    You could argue that most of these provide ongoing services, but that will also be the case if you license one of their models commercially, contracts come with strings attached both ways.