> Power electronics are still modular and are easily swappable.
Depends. These parts are custom designed, physically, and difficult to find off-the-shelf replacements for.
The heater fan-controller on my wife's SUV died. This is simply a current-limiting device: receives (I assume) CAN signals from the dashboard rotary encoder and determines what current to send the fan.
While I could have dragged my 'scope to the car, determine what signals it's getting from the dash system (all integrated, btw), it was easier to find one in China and wait six weeks.
(I may have chosen the first option if this happened in the winter, but in summer the heater is never used anyway).
> I've been drawn into the Janet posts that surface every once in a while here on HN, but found the otherwise highly praised "Janet for Mortals", not being for mortals at all.
I'm surprised: the language is very straightfoward, simple, very few rules to remember. It's a Lisp but with a very small surface area.
I mean, compared to other languages, Janet really is easier to lean, so I'm surprised that the book for it is difficult (did not read the book, but familiar-ish with the language. I don't have anything but praise for it, TBH).
> If gun manufacturers can't be sued for product liability when used to fire bullets into people, it's rich to say that the manufacturer of a chatbot can be found liable when it mindlessly says "Good point" to people who already have serious mental health problems.
I don't think the token providers want the same level of regulation as guns.
> FOSS has always been about just writing code and putting it out into the world where others can do as they please with it.
That is wrong. How can you write that with a straight face? There are projects that are put into the public domain (one major one comes to mind), but the clear majority of FOSS projects have strings attached which make the intention of the authors absolutely clear.
IOW, if you're not happy with what the cost of the product is, then just don't use it.
I mean, the most restrictive license, the GPL, was conceived specifically to protect the "four freedoms" and prevent subsequent modifications from violating them. The "copyleft" concept was specifically designed to create an ecosystem that behaved as if copyright didn't apply in the first place.
I don't know how you can imply with a straight face that it did anything else.
I don't know how you can possibly argue that non-redistributive usage of software could ever violate the GPL -- and the other common FOSS licenses don't even have the copyleft provision, and literally are saying "do whatever you want, but I'm not responsible".
> The "copyleft" concept was specifically designed to create an ecosystem that behaved as if copyright didn't apply in the first place.
And if copyright didn't exist in the first place we wouldn't be having this conversation, because the models created by all the token providers will be open to all for whatever use that anyone wanted.
But it does exist, and within this framework, the creator gets to say how you may redistribute their IP, and "We compressed it very much" isn't an out.
> But it does exist, and within this framework, the creator gets to say how you may redistribute their IP,
Right. And the way the creator gets to exercise that say is by releasing their work under a license. If you release your work under a FOSS license, you're saying "you are free to copy this work and use it for your own purposes".
Complaining that people are using it for purposes you don't like after you've already given permission to them to use it for whatever purposes they please seems a bit disingenuous.
> and "We compressed it very much" isn't an out.
It's not, but I don't think we're discussing that. We're talking about LLMs, not people redistributing zip files containing someone else's work. If you're trying to imply that LLMs are merely a form of compression, that's a position you've got to argue for, because I'm definitely not seeing any similarity between the two.
> that behaved as if copyright didn't apply in the first place.
If copyright didn't exist then the share-alike and anti-tivoization clauses wouldn't work, FOSS in general wouldn't even protect attribution. Copyleft ecosystems depend on some amount of copyright law to uphold themselves.
> People who are making stuff because they want to share it are still going to be publishing.
Those people who do that are too few and far between to make a difference. The majority of open source devs aren't giving away the source without a license. That license is how they specify what they want in return.
> The majority of open source devs aren't giving away the source without a license.
100% of open source devs aren’t giving away the source without a license, since a licence—the grant of permissions for what is otherwise exclusive to author under the law—is what makes something open source.
> That license is how they specify what they want in return.
No, the license is how they legally give away permission to use material that is legally subjejct to their exclusive rights by virtue of creation. The license may be a contract license that, as you suggest, involves mutual exchange of value, but for many (especially permissive) open source licenses it is a gratuitous bounded grant of permission which has limits but does not involve giving something of value back to the creator.
> No, the license is how they legally give away permission to use material that is legally subjejct to their exclusive rights by virtue of creation. The license may be a contract license that, as you suggest, involves mutual exchange of value, but for many (especially permissive) open source licenses it is a gratuitous bounded grant of permission which has limits but does not involve giving something of value back to the creator.
Wrong. What they want in return is either credit or derivatives of the software. It's disingenuous to suggest that all these authors specifying, in a legal document, the exact mechanism by which to pay them back don't know what they are asking.
If you're not happy with that trade, then don't make it.
> The social contract that I've personally always attributed to FOSS communities was that attempting to restrict how people downstream of you use code is illegitimate,
That's wrong. What on earth gave you that impression when the licenses specifically set constraints on what downstream can do (from "release derivatives as open" to "put me in the credits").
Which part of which open source licenses gave you the impression that there were no restrictions?
> That's wrong. What on earth gave you that impression when the licenses specifically set constraints on what downstream can do (from "release derivatives as open" to "put me in the credits").
These are restrictions on redistribution, not use. And they're there to make sure that derivative works can't themselves impose restrictions on use.
Depends. These parts are custom designed, physically, and difficult to find off-the-shelf replacements for.
The heater fan-controller on my wife's SUV died. This is simply a current-limiting device: receives (I assume) CAN signals from the dashboard rotary encoder and determines what current to send the fan.
While I could have dragged my 'scope to the car, determine what signals it's getting from the dash system (all integrated, btw), it was easier to find one in China and wait six weeks.
(I may have chosen the first option if this happened in the winter, but in summer the heater is never used anyway).
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