Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49756427

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

I don't understand how we will sustain an ecosystem of open models like the one that exists today. My thoughts go down this path every time I try to put the pieces together:

- Many open models depend on high quality frontier models as a distillation input

- US closed frontier models drive China's open model strategy despite the business model for open models being somewhat fuzzy

- What is the business model that benefits from open weights, exactly? How do their vendors recoup infrastructure and training costs?

I would be grateful to be enlightened on this topic.

Some highlights:

- Drives Claude Code as a quasi-subagent via "Channels," which supports multi-turn interaction with the host and suspend / resume

- Declarative configuration in the flake of exactly what is copied into the VM (besides the local project), what DNS origins are allowed, etc.

- Shared access to host Nix store / object DB via overlay FS

- Syncs code with the host over a shared (local) Git remote (no worktree mess to manage)

- Devshell commands for quickly dropping into the guest and viewing status of all VMs etc.

- VMs start in a couple of seconds

I maintain that firing is an extreme resolution here (taking the claims at face value of course). Surely this employee has demonstrated the capacity to deliver impact and could be redirected if properly incentivized.

Even if this person violated that process, it is an extreme consequence to fire them for that infraction.

In my team's case we would include expectation-setting language in the README.md so that it was clear that the project was not an officially-supported Google product.

As far as I know, no-one ever lost their job for failing to set that expectation. A gentle correction from legal was sufficient to set the world right.

First: you ought to disclose that information when commenting on a topic that relates in some way to your financial incentives.

Second: when I worked at Google under Chrome it was very common for individuals and teams to publish projects to open source repositories under Google-managed Github orgs. In fact, for most of my tenure ('15-'21) my team had license to publish to Github unilaterally (no approval from the open source office required). Great power comes with great responsibility, but also I would put to you that publishing an open source project like this one is part of Google's culture.

Firing seems an extreme consequence for the perceived damage of a long-tenured employee's behavior in this case.

How do you know that the other models you are referring to aren't subsidized?

This choice is made for us. The deciding factors will be convenience and economics.

My sense is that just like Web 2.0 SaaS we are destined for servitude.

A better strategy is to play an assymetrical game IMO. Don't let your would-be master write the rules by which you play.

This strategy will seem to work really well until the economy that enabled that foundation to form is hollowed out. Then, there will be a reckoning (but we will have no choice but to march forth from there).

https://organism.earth/library/document/art-of-meditation

> No evidence is shared

Help an open-minded critic out.

Man, I feel old.

https://poignant.guide/book/chapter-3.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47768793

Points: 2

# Comments: 0