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.

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wqaatwt 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> 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)

	▲	spongebobstoes 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		altruism is not discernable from the outside any altruistic act can be perceived as self serving

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brookst 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And ultimately the motivation for those contributions just doesn’t matter, except to those who like to anthropomorphize company and argue about their souls.

	▲	Dibby053 7 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		People who donated to OpenAI in its early years might disagree on that.
	▲	kelipso 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		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.

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threethirtytwo 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

	▲	mejutoco an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> 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.