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TeMPOraLyesterday at 8:09 AM3 repliesview on HN

Sharing for advancing humanity / benefit of society, and megacorps getting rich off it, is not either-or. On the contrary, megacorps are in part how the benefit to society materializes. After all, it's megacorps that make and distribute the equipment and the software stacks I am using to write code on, that you are using to do your research on, etc.

I find the whole line of thinking, "I won't share my stuff because then a megacorp may use it without paying me the fractional picobuck I'm entitled to", to be a strong case of Dog in the Manger mindset. And I meant that even before LLM exploded, back when people were wringing their hands about Elasticsearch being used by Amazon, back in 2021 or so.

Sharing is sharing. One can't say "oh I'm sharing this for anyone to benefit", and then upon seeing someone using it to make money, say "oh but not like that!!". Or rather, one can say, but then they're just lying about having shared the thing. "OSS but not for megacorps/aicorps" is just proprietary software. Which is perfectly fine thing to work on; what's not fine is lying about it being open.


Replies

lentil_soupyesterday at 11:14 AM

> "OSS but not for megacorps/aicorps" is just proprietary software

why? it's not like it's binary. It could well be that it's open source but can't be used by a company of X size. I'm not a lawyer but why couldn't a license have that clause? I would still class that as being open, for some definition of open

3formyesterday at 9:38 AM

LLMs are one thing, but when you bring ES in AWS example, as outlined in the article, the problem is not the software being used; it's being _made proprietary_. It's about free and open software remaining free and open. Especially to the end user.

graemepyesterday at 9:28 AM

> On the contrary, megacorps are in part how the benefit to society materializes.

That would be true if they were the product of a genuine competitive market.

In fact their strength is in eliminating competition, erecting barriers to entry, manipulating regulation, and maintaining the status quo.

> "OSS but not for megacorps/aicorps"

Who is advocating that? People just want everyone to stick to the terms of the licences.