This is a motivation for Zuckerberg's letter that I hadn't considered---thank you.
I think the main point of my post still stands: People who care about openness and software freedom shouldn't buy that Llama 3.1 is 'open'. (Secondly, I argue that the same people shouldn't buy 'more open implies safer'.)
Perhaps we agree on this, and your point is simply that it was obvious to everyone already and therefore went without saying. Is that right?
I wouldn’t say it’s that obvious simply because of how effective nerd sniping can be and how blind people are to business strategy.
The moment that letter came out everyone pounced on Zuckerberg on HN over how his company’s product isn’t quite open source. They did not put two and two together: this is a company that does release bona fide open source for software developers all the time. I’m Pretty Darn Sure (tm) Zuckerberg knows what open source means. He’s not an idiot. People don’t need to explain it to him. And he has no point in waging war against open source on AI grounds because it will not net him a victory of any kind. His company was built on open source technology. He gives away open source technology to developers in order to deter them from using his competitors’ tooling (mindshare).
Exactly no one in open source needs to be given a historic lesson on Linux. That should have been a dead giveaway. He’s using Linux and open source as an argument in favour of his company’s vision. He’s using the analogy of Linux in a way that should, ideally, give most people pause. You never saw it coming, did you? He knows what he’s doing so well that this is a master class in what business moves are all about. But no, you’re blind to it.
I understand peoples grievances: open source is the stander-by getting caught in the crossfire. An innocent victim of two clans waging war and both are using it a shield.
But as a tool of business feuds, and in particular anyone accused of monopolizing a tech space, the word “open” is powerful. “Open Source” has in the minds of anyone who has heard of it become synonymous with good, noble, selfless things. Again, mindshare. It can be used offensively or defensively if your framing of the situation is convincing. OpenAI is riding on this. And now Meta is finding their angle. Things will get political soon and this is why Zuckerberg is aligning himself to particular viewpoints.
I bring up congress only because he’s gone in front of them already, he’s surrounded himself with lawyers, he’s got competition a mile long and a mile deep, and he’s seen competitors grow and lo knows what it will take to not be surprised and cornered. AI as a technology can usurp the moat his company has built because it was “primitive” Web technology that brought him his success, and he knows it takes fighting dirty to prevent his competitors from doing to him what he did to his competitors early on. He does not want to be caught with his pants down without a strategy, but this move in particular is about thinking 2-3 steps ahead.
As an aside, it’s amusing to me because this is after all HN, the somewhat propagandist arm of a VC tech incubator/angel investor where internally this sort of business strategy is discussed regularly (not to mention Sam Altman having been president and now leading a non-open source company while claiming they’re open and singing kumbaya to the unsuspecting audiences that can’t see their business strategy in front of them). That the general audience is blind to this deserves a bucket of cold water across the face to wake people up. It’s all a ruse. Business is vicious, tech or otherwise.
