| ▲ | sinisterfeller 3 hours ago |
| Interesting how a comment asking about the reasoning behind releasing this as open source is getting attacked, as if doing a good thing should not ever be questioned. I do wonder of China's motives behind this as well. The government would not allow this open work if it did not benefit them somehow, or perhaps they feel that keeping it closed is not very important right now (maybe because they are somewhat behind the frontier). Comparing a university student Torvalds and state actors open sourcing code is pretty naive... |
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| ▲ | swiftcoder 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| You seem to severely overestimate the level of centralised command-and-control in China. It's not like every software company is going to the government for explicit sign-off of every open source release. There is a pretty clear benefit to DeepSeek's reputation for all the other providers offering DeekSeek's open-weights model to have similar performance/benchmark scores. In the past performance has varied wildly across inference providers, making this available should result in every inference provider implementing the same optimisations |
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| ▲ | fakwandi_priv 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > On October 16, 2026, the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Science and Technology issued Announcement No. 48 of 2026, publicly solicited opinions on the revision of the China Export Prohibition and Export Restriction Technology Catalogue (hereinafter referred to as the Catalogue), and implemented temporary management measures for pre-export registration of relevant technologies. Recently, the spokesman of the Ministry of Commerce answered questions from reporters on relevant issues. https://m.bjnews.com.cn/detail/1792137269129878.html Apparently globally recognized top 10 models (so Deepseek 4.1 Flash and GLM 5.3 Flash) would have fallen under this export registration. | | |
| ▲ | swiftcoder an hour ago | parent [-] | | > Apparently globally recognized top 10 models (so Deepseek 4.1 Flash and GLM 5.3 Flash) would have fallen under this export registration. The model, yes, but not the inference framework. There's also an explicit exception in there for open source releases (which may explain in part why these companies prefer to work in the open) |
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| ▲ | _aavaa_ 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The other benefit is that as more of the stack is open sourced we can finally see just how cheaply these models can be served. Which in turn gives us insight into what the frontier labs might be doing. That, and drive down prices everywhere. | |
| ▲ | lijok 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You underestimate it. 7% of Chinas total population are members of the CCP. 7%. So at DeepSeek there's a good few handfuls of them. If you want to understand the impact of that, read up on reporting lines in the CCP. Not every company needs sign-off from the government for an OSS release, but every OSS release is visible to the government. | | |
| ▲ | benjiro29 a minute ago | parent | next [-] | | > 7% of Chinas total population are members of the CCP. 7%. So at DeepSeek there's a good few handfuls of them. If you want a government job, you need to be member of the party. That is no different then the old USSR system. You end up with a overcount of "members" as people who ideology subscribe to the system, vs people who just become members for the better jobs. And yes, those people also get fired or leave government jobs (especially given the financial issues in the local governments the last few years because of the building crisis / lack of income). So this type of throw towel over everybody to make a point is just a useless statistic. | |
| ▲ | sampullman an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Every open source release is visible to me, too. Is your point that the government could stop it if they wanted? That's true of every government, but it's not a problem until it actually happens. |
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| ▲ | pillefitz 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I would assume DeepSeek is considered one of China's strategic assets and is therefore heavily policed. |
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| ▲ | vincnetas 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| china is playing long game, not quarter to quarter. As one diplomat said : "We don't care! China has been here for 5,000 years. Most of the time, there was no United States and we survived" |
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| ▲ | lp92 an hour ago | parent [-] | | Egypt has been around longer. That's kind of a silly political statement. |
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| ▲ | lijok 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| So what makes you think it's not Chinese nationals attacking those comments? Please never forget that US runs the largest state-sponsored hacking program. They are and have always been the largest APT. Anything opposing that narrative is blatant propaganda. RE motivations - I wonder whether this is part of their push to double down on social stability efforts? |
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| ▲ | 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | user2722 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This is based on a video seen on Facebook, so take it with a grain of salt. AFAIK, BYD batteries are based on "bad" materials, with fabrication method perfected until they are competitive [enough(?)] with batteries made with the "good" materials. The good stuff is patented, locked by the West. China workarounds it. It's not that it is "bad", is just copying West's strategy doesn't work for them. |
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| ▲ | ZeroGravitas 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | This seems like a garbled retelling of the shift from NMC batteries to LFP. The latter are worse on some dimensions, so much so they weren't considered viable for cars in the West. But incremental improvement saw them take over the Chinese market. A classic "low end disruption" story. They bought up the patents from A123, and American firm with a Taiwanese American MIT researcher founder. The firm floundered in the global financial crisis, a time that is a big inflection point for China's global domination of green tech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A123_Systems | |
| ▲ | adrian_b an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The problem with that theory is that BYD and a few other Chinese companies already for some years have had batteries that are better than anything made in the West, from the point of view of energy density, charging rate, temperature range, cost, so if there is some stuff that is patented and locked by the West, that is the bad stuff. Living in the EU, I find it concerning that China has advanced so much in battery technology and in the West there are very few positive signs of attempting to keep up with them. Closing your eyes and imagining that others are not really better, when they are, is not the right strategy to avoid remaining behind. | |
| ▲ | darkwater 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Which good (EV, I presume) battery provider is from "the West"? | |
| ▲ | techpression 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | From what I’ve heard from owners (anecdotal) those batteries are still utter garbage. | | |
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| ▲ | Bengalilol an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It benefits the _whole_ chinese economy. Providing those raw tools to whatever company. What about the impact on China's GDP growth? |
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| ▲ | christophilus 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I don’t think there’s got to be some deep conspiracy. Opening this is a pretty clear way to commoditize your competition. That’s an age-old strategy. The community may very well get this up to speed faster than if it remained closed, and DeepSeek / China can (probably) run circles around US labs from a hosting / service cost perspective. |
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| ▲ | killingtime74 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Yes surely if they are benefited we must lose.... Somehow I just have to think of the reason..../s |
