This is really a feel good argument and I agree with what he’s saying in principle but it offers zero in terms of a practical strategy or stable state where this is feasible. If you want to jump on the bandwagon then let’s put our pants on and offer a concrete suggestion that is practical and coherent. Otherwise what are we doing. Does anyone have suggestions to that effect?

What’s the world in which frontier model performance is open source? What does that look like? What’s a sensible business model that makes this sustainable? What’s a sensible regulatory framework that doesn’t hamstring AI progress?

Everyone is so enamored with these Chinese lab models like deepseek and qwen and GLM but they exist in a world where the top performance is still claimed by closed source models. These are not developed out of any benevolent commitment to the principles laid out in this article. A world in which OSS is the frontier and its development is controlled and funded by government subsidies of an autocratic government is not reassuring. You can inspect weights but good luck getting the cat back in the bag in terms of capabilities, safeguards, value system, bias, nerfing if it smells American business use cases.

Deepseek was such a darling but guess what, it’s now raising money — 300M at 10 billion valuation. OSS development isn’t sustainable as a business model and in a world where it costs a few hundred million to develop a frontier model, you need a strong business model, or you need strong state subsidies and incentives which introduce a billion new problems.

the most sensible economic picture of OSS models already exist. Commoditize your complement, passion projects for a hedge fund. These are unsustainable and exist at the pleasure of the business or the founder.