> Or there is a commercial logic that motivates sharing of information and intellectual property? What logic is that?
There absolutely is a sound commercial justification to share research: long-term growth through advancement of the field. (Deep learning would never have made the progress it has without open research!)
If this seems quaint, it’s because we’re too accustomed to short-term, transactional, Wall Street thinking.
Plus, it's probably going to leak anyway. If it's really just an idea, and you need to hire humans to work on it who will move in and out or your org.
Might as well get some dubious medium term gain rather than spend a bunch of money on security for nothing.
It's not so much that it seems quaint, it's that we are accustomed to short-term, transactional, Wall Street thinking from companies like Google.
For very good reason, because that's exactly how they behave in all other areas. The question remains, why do they appear altruistic when it comes to sharing papers?
I find it hard to believe that it's actual altruism. It's far more likely that it's transactional behavior that just appears altruistic from the outside.
> it's that we are accustomed to short-term, transactional, Wall Street thinking from companies like Google.
Out of all of the companies in the world, I wouldn't put Google near the bottom of the list in terms of stuff they've discovered and released to the world.
It's such a rapidly developing field with much of the progress happening in small labs on the open source models. Eventually, the field will coverage and stabilize. For now, the bet is too be open and supportive, to be close to the progress and be in best position when the dust settles.
It isn’t altruism! It’s good business: it pursues economic gain through mutual benefit.
People may be altruistic, but in a company setting they may have no possibility for altruism. CEO decisions influence property of others (the shareholders) so he can not freely pursue altruistic goals.
I heard that Dodge v. Ford Motor Co. was an important precedent in the US. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
These days the courts give wide latitude to companies to offer virtually any plausible reason why superficially altruistic acts are in fact good long term for shareholder value. Anyone wanting to do what Ford did just needs to keep their mouth shut about the real reasons.
Interesting. Do you know any particular court cases?
My wikipedia link above in turn links to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_primacy, which says in the last paragraph: "The doctrine waned in later years."
This probably confirms what you say, but I'd be interested to learn about specific cases.
Everyone benefits from the gains, everyone gets more customers and more investment.