I don't think this headline can be qualified as correct or incorrect without explaining why.
Most people reading it would think I'm referring to bloom's performance in the title. In that sense, it's more to grab attention than anything.
However, my argument for bloom was a sociopolitical one, not technical. In that sense, all I said remains true today.
Bloom was underwhelming performance-wise except for its multilingual capabilities (when I wrote it the model had just been trained, no results were available). Still, that's a proof of how hard it is to make an initiative like BigScience work well.
That said, I'd use the headline again, making the same argument. I can't say whether the headline is correct or not because the question needs more context!
> This isn’t the first time open-source has won over privacy and control. We have examples in computers, operating systems, browsers, and search engines.
Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA architectures are all closed.
Most used OSes, namely Windows, macOS, and iOS are all closed.
Opera, Safari and Google Chrome are all closed.
Google, Bing, Baidu are all closed.
What examples do you have in mind really? Linux & Firefox?
Intel/AMD are essentially open because the x86 architecture was clones, creating a competitive marketplace that delivers for users. That's WHY PCs are so popular. ARM is licensed, yes, but a very competitive marketplace with multiple manufacturers, all competing to deliver the best products to you.
OpenCores has plenty of alternative, completely open chip designs available, and you CAN buy off the shelf open CPU architectures (such as RISC-V) and entire system boards for them, that will run open operating systems, such as Linux. Open BIOSes are available. Furthermore, you're free to emulate something like x86 (or your old mainframe, or whatever) on those open chips (albeit slowly), using open source code, and even to extend those open CPU instruction sets with additional instructions to improve HARDWARE emulation performance, and so on.
The most used OS is Linux: it's used on supercomputers, on most of the servers on the internet, a lot of the servers in corporations, a lot of engineering and science desktops, and a lot of devices like phones, IoT, etc. Linux, like other unixes including BSD (which itself includes MacOS's XNU/Darwin) are Open Source, and all Unices worth talking about are based on open standards: POSIX, etc.
Opera, Safari, Chrome, and Edge are all based on Webkit, which is open source (it came from KHTML, out of the KDE project). Chrome itself is essentially Open Source, as "Chromium". The main competitor to those browsers, Firefox, is also open source. The standards that browsers, and the internet itself are based on, are also open standards.
Google is closed source, yes, but it's JUST a search engine. There are lots of competitors, should you choose to use them, including open source competitors.
Even in "closed" operating systems such as Windows, there are open source clones like WINE and ReactOS, and Windows itself is dependent on open source components like ssh, and includes Linux because Windows is essentially dying (albeit very very slowly).
No point complaining about lack of open source options, if you fail to research and actually CHOOSE Open Source.
Hi Phil, this is a reasonable concern. I think between total privacy/control and careless openness there's room for better solutions. Open source is good. Mindless open source isn't.
You can always set up requirements to access some data or research. That'd be a better solution.
Also, I understand your example but making a nuclear bomb is much more difficult than you suggest here. Definitely, a single human can't, within minutes, start to make one.
Do you still feel the title of this article is correct, Alberto?
Great question Bart,
I don't think this headline can be qualified as correct or incorrect without explaining why.
Most people reading it would think I'm referring to bloom's performance in the title. In that sense, it's more to grab attention than anything.
However, my argument for bloom was a sociopolitical one, not technical. In that sense, all I said remains true today.
Bloom was underwhelming performance-wise except for its multilingual capabilities (when I wrote it the model had just been trained, no results were available). Still, that's a proof of how hard it is to make an initiative like BigScience work well.
That said, I'd use the headline again, making the same argument. I can't say whether the headline is correct or not because the question needs more context!
> This isn’t the first time open-source has won over privacy and control. We have examples in computers, operating systems, browsers, and search engines.
Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA architectures are all closed.
Most used OSes, namely Windows, macOS, and iOS are all closed.
Opera, Safari and Google Chrome are all closed.
Google, Bing, Baidu are all closed.
What examples do you have in mind really? Linux & Firefox?
Well, no.
Intel/AMD are essentially open because the x86 architecture was clones, creating a competitive marketplace that delivers for users. That's WHY PCs are so popular. ARM is licensed, yes, but a very competitive marketplace with multiple manufacturers, all competing to deliver the best products to you.
OpenCores has plenty of alternative, completely open chip designs available, and you CAN buy off the shelf open CPU architectures (such as RISC-V) and entire system boards for them, that will run open operating systems, such as Linux. Open BIOSes are available. Furthermore, you're free to emulate something like x86 (or your old mainframe, or whatever) on those open chips (albeit slowly), using open source code, and even to extend those open CPU instruction sets with additional instructions to improve HARDWARE emulation performance, and so on.
The most used OS is Linux: it's used on supercomputers, on most of the servers on the internet, a lot of the servers in corporations, a lot of engineering and science desktops, and a lot of devices like phones, IoT, etc. Linux, like other unixes including BSD (which itself includes MacOS's XNU/Darwin) are Open Source, and all Unices worth talking about are based on open standards: POSIX, etc.
Opera, Safari, Chrome, and Edge are all based on Webkit, which is open source (it came from KHTML, out of the KDE project). Chrome itself is essentially Open Source, as "Chromium". The main competitor to those browsers, Firefox, is also open source. The standards that browsers, and the internet itself are based on, are also open standards.
Google is closed source, yes, but it's JUST a search engine. There are lots of competitors, should you choose to use them, including open source competitors.
Even in "closed" operating systems such as Windows, there are open source clones like WINE and ReactOS, and Windows itself is dependent on open source components like ssh, and includes Linux because Windows is essentially dying (albeit very very slowly).
No point complaining about lack of open source options, if you fail to research and actually CHOOSE Open Source.
...or rather, Free Software.
Hi Phil, this is a reasonable concern. I think between total privacy/control and careless openness there's room for better solutions. Open source is good. Mindless open source isn't.
You can always set up requirements to access some data or research. That'd be a better solution.
Also, I understand your example but making a nuclear bomb is much more difficult than you suggest here. Definitely, a single human can't, within minutes, start to make one.