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jchw a day ago | parent | next [-]

Well of course nobody believes that, there are a large number of great Chinese open source projects, and plenty of great Chinese contributors to open source projects. I have zero doubts that Chinese people are at least equally as capable of embracing open source as anyone else. It would be strange to suggest otherwise.

That said, though, I do have trouble believing the long-term story for open weights, anywhere. We do not need an evil government for open weight to "make sense", but I do think we need some government involvement for open weight to make sense in the long run. Otherwise, it's not 100% clear how they could be sustainable, and I don't think massive companies really can be trusted to just be philanthropic with no incentives indefinitely (or really, much at all to begin with.)

Chinese models being open weight does help them gain some Western mindshare, whereas for obvious reasons Americans would be very suspicious of running their source code and prompts through Chinese providers. (And I think that's justified, I just also think that American providers aren't really that much better in the long run, and you should prefer to not have to go through any provider for true privacy.)

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nylonstrung a day ago | parent [-]

The CCP encourages open source contributions from companies, you can see this in how much Alibaba open sources across their entire stack

Chinese tech leans much more heavily towards build vs. buy than the SaaS dominated West (where programmers are more expensive) so the positive externalities on their tech industry are more pronounced

	▲	jchw a day ago \| parent [-]
		Sure, when it comes to the big corporations I don't deny CCP's influence on their strategy. Hell, in some cases, it's easy to root for their strategy, because sometimes our tech industry sucks. Don't have to love them to occasionally agree with them. But, in terms of individuals, of course, we're really not so different.

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KeplerBoy a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Sir, this is a multi-billion dollar operation. There have to be some incentives.

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bigyabai a day ago | parent | next [-]

You could argue that Linux is a trillion-dollar project, it doesn't shift the goalposts.

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abalashov a day ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah, but the trillion dollars are not concentrated in the Linux kernel project, but instead distributed all over the planet. That's not how the AI lab economy works.

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polyomino a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Linux is a huge project and is not really comparable to Debian

	▲	esseph a day ago \| parent [-]
		This is an interesting statement that I found myself reading from two different interpretations of what you meant, and I find both possibilities to be equally true depending on your POV.

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m000 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

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liamwire 18 hours ago | parent [-]

I like the comparison, but I'm not sure it holds. What did it cost him to develop beyond intangibles such as his time and money forgone? Because the latter especially is not equivalent to upfront capex and opex costs that preempt any ability to be charitable. Genuinely asking, but I'd be hard pressed to think it's even within the same magnitude.

	▲	rzerowan 17 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Well there is a close equivalent today where a similar situation is playing out.With the argument being made that the dev cost aside - the pricing is being tied to what the potential future treatments would have cost. Save a child from crippling illness and a lifetime of pain with a single dhot: Jonas Salk 0$ ,Doug Ingram 3.2M$ [1] [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20260118223436/https://www.cbsne...