Be an Open Source Absolutist

https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1711737838889242880

by hardmaru • 3 years ago

132 77 3 years ago

twitter.com

keikobadthebad• 3 years ago

Maybe not a great choice to tell this on closed source, politically captured twitter.

royjacobs• 3 years ago

Would you rather he posted it to an open-source platform where everyone already agrees with him?

Darmody• 3 years ago

Would you rather post it on a social network that nobody uses in a video format that lacks quality like Stallman does?

Anyway, maybe I'm getting this wrong but I don't think he's saying that everything has to be 100% open source. He's talking about the tools we need to build everything, that backbone of the software.

babyeater9000• 3 years ago

I think that Carmack is really savvy. He is being effective in his messaging by using a popular platform. I almost got offended because he didn't say free software but he straight up listed the four freedoms. And Doom got open sourced so he lives it. I think Carmack is on the side of right; there are no true Scotsmen.

SkyMarshal3• 3 years ago

Twitter open sources some things [1], but they're not really doing anything groundbreaking or making any real advances in software. Even if they were to open source 100% of their tech, it wouldn't move the needle much.

[1] https://github.com/twitter

renegade-otter2• 3 years ago

Why, is HN open-sourced? Is Reddit? I don't get this argument. The whole point is that we don't have to spin up our own open-sourced blog and host it ourselves just to post an opinion on the Internet anymore.

xNeil• 3 years ago

Politically captured Twitter was far more politically captured before Elon's takeover.
Closed source Elon open sourced the algorithm.

afandian• 3 years ago

In the spirit of the first amendment, congress should make no law abridging the freedom to release open source software.

This is an odd twist at the end. What’s it referencing?

SkyMarshal3• 3 years ago

He's referencing the 90s crypto wars which he covered earlier in his comment. The cryptographers won that round when DJB won his lawsuit vs the US govt that resulted in software being considered speech:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_J._Bernstein#Bernstein_...

paulddraper2• 3 years ago

It's not referencing anything, other than the first amendment.

I.e. saying that source code is protected speech.

gwern• 3 years ago

How much open source neural network code or models or research has John Carmack's Keen Technologies (>1y, +$20m raised) released?

sxp• 3 years ago

Technically, none of the stuff they've released _hasn't_ been open source since they're still in semi-stealth mode.

Program_Error• 3 years ago

I remember him being very pro Windows. If so then this is a welcome change of spirit. I hope he is daily driving a Linux system at home and I hope everyone else here does as well.

archontes2• 3 years ago

Now is the time to daily drive linux with a Windows VM for the few moments it's needed.

cmiller1• 3 years ago

More so than just using closed source software, since Bill Gates' Open Letter To Hobbyists in 1976 Microsoft has been the biggest opponent to the sharing of software in the world. If you care about open source do not give them a dime.

tredre3• 3 years ago

He was very pro Windows because Windows' development tools are simply much better (yeah yeah I know your pimped emacs with a stack of 25 scripts/plugins to interface with gdb is so much more productive than Visual Studio's debugger, bravo...).

It wasn't the sort of anti-linux sentiment that you're implying.

renegade-otter2• 3 years ago

Also, he was a game developer - which is heavily lopsided towards Windows. Shocking, I know.

cherryteastain• 3 years ago

Dependency management for any C/C++ project in Windows sucks compared to Linux. If you really want a Microsoft IDE, VS Code runs natively on Linux and has all the debugging capabilities of VS.

PH95VuimJjqBqy2• 3 years ago

I would say the pimped out emacs is probably better than everything _except_ visual studio.

VS is hands down the best IDE in the world, bar none. And I say this as someone who runs linux on everything except my gaming pc and my work laptop.

Once you step outside of visual studio though ... nothing compares with those setups (I use vim, but the sentiment is the same). It's because you have easy access to the entire OS, not anything specific to vim/emacs (although there's a lot of great things to say about them too).

sashimimono2• 3 years ago

Please correct me if I am wrong here, but did he take this position also when meta made occulus as closed as possible? Running any opensource stuff on it? Connecting it to an free operating system? You could not even buy one here, at least not without selling your personal data.

I have a unpleasant feeling that this well intended talk is only a move to protect his future work and foremost business.

(but I do hope that I am wrong)

SkyMarshal3• 3 years ago

I seem to recall he wasn't happy about it, but don't recall where he said that or what the details were. Could be wrong, wasn't paying that close attention. He also left after a while without immediately moving on to something else, so it seems he was unhappy about something there.

dartharva4• 3 years ago

He is not anti-proprietary, he is just criticising the arguably moronic notion that open-source AI tools need to be banned or regulated just because they are "too dangerous" in public hands. That's all the argument is about.

paulddraper2• 3 years ago

Nearly no one has actually read his post.

His point is allow open source not only use open source.

"Be a Free Speech Absolutist".

Open Source AI is in many people’s crosshairs today. They believe that giving free access to state of the art algorithms and models without any guardrails constitutes a danger to society, that the public can’t be entrusted...
In the spirit of the first amendment, congress should make no law abridging the freedom to release open source software.

I.e. Stop AI from becoming the modern version of prohibited encryption. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...

extraduder_ire2• 3 years ago

He did get the source code for the discontinued oculus go released, at least. All of those devices were destined to be ewaste otherwise.

kridsdale32• 3 years ago

John didn't own the company. He wasn't CEO either. He may not have had the clout to override the investors who would call shots such as that. And unlike every other VR software company circa 2011, Oculus made a LOT of money for its investors, mostly by being Apple-like with its restrictions.

justinclift• 3 years ago

https://nitter.net/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1711737838889242880

justaj• 3 years ago

Huh, I wonder why the main Nitter instance does work, but many popular ones like https://nitter.fly.dev/ and https://nitter.kavin.rocks/ do not.

aloisdg• 3 years ago

Maybe they are using an outdated version of nitter

Given_47• 3 years ago

Noticed the same recently but with some others such as nitter.tux.pizza but with the main instance working (which I’ve avoided cuz it seemed like it was overrun for a good 1-2 months)

reducesuffering5• 3 years ago

Open source kamikaze drones? Open source house location finder via twitter handle?

archontes2• 3 years ago

I, for one, am extremely for open source kamikaze drones.

orangepanda• 3 years ago

On the otherhand, open source anti-kamikaze drones?

lelandfe• 3 years ago

I sure hope the maintainer works on my issue soon

saidinesh5• 3 years ago

For better or for worse, most of the code running on kamikaze drones these days is open source. Radio Control link, flight control software, ESC firmware.. a lot of it is open source hardware too.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WpCPdMzQoYE

dartharva4• 3 years ago

Why not? In fact weaponizable software should be the first thing to be open-sourced so that everyone studies them and adopts countermeasures, instead of them being a secret privy only to shady parties.

reducesuffering5• 3 years ago

Is that why the world is trying to nix nuclear weapons proliferation?

nitwit005• 3 years ago

Having the kamikaze drones be closed source just means you have to pay someone a licensing fee before you blow your enemies up.

Similarly, you'd presumably just be paying for access to that Twitter personal data mapping.

Brian_K_White5• 3 years ago

Also means you have no defense against the states kamikaze drones. Great. Way Better!

Brian_K_White5• 3 years ago

What about them?

What about open source learning martial arts and excercising a lot?

The fear of someone else's potential to harm is meaningless without some idea what you propose to do about it, and having that idea be at at all remotely tolerable or even sane.

It doesn't matter how scared you are of the possibility of a drone or anything else, since you can be afraid of litetally infinite possible things. What matters is, is there anything that you have any reasonable right to do about it? Can you prevent open source drones that could somehow be used to harm you, without causing a million times more harm to everyone else just to make you feel safer?

Open source kamikaze drones, ok sure, what, precicely, about them? Finish your thought. I await amazement.

reducesuffering5• 3 years ago

Do you believe everyone has the right to RPG weapons? Nuclear weapons? What do you think the substantial difference is between an RPG and a kamikaze drone?

prepend3• 3 years ago

Aren’t the explosives recipes making the drones explode also “open source” or at least not IP restricted.

gentleman11• 3 years ago

Speaking of which, doom being released as free software has led, indirectly, to this being nanoWADmo, national wad creating month, where people make doom maps. The community is thriving all these years later, you should see modern doom mega wads by people like skillsaw. There are hundreds of these projects

johnea• 3 years ago

He says, in the twitverse...

nomilk• 3 years ago

Tangental, but twitter is really nice for thoughts like this.

It loads (fast). There's no obnoxious modals or even ads. The whole article's available in plain text. It gives a view/like count. Commenting is frictionless and via a well-established method, and authors often follow up answering questions.

It's my preferred way of reading text on the web. Maybe 2nd to old school personal websites (since they're less likely to get deleted - I don't quite trust twitter to not do that).

skydhash• 3 years ago

It loads (fast). There's no obnoxious modals or even ads.

Most forums are faster (head-fi, mobileread). And twitter is chokeful of ads and spammy replies.

bensecure• 3 years ago

It loads (fast).

It's painfully slow. Probably depends on your connection and device, but I install libredirect on my phone purely to avoid twitter load times.

hprotagonist• 3 years ago

Back in the 90s, there were legal battles in the US over software capable of strong encryption. There were scare stories about how terrorists and child pornographers would use the technology to evade justice, but people were also wearing T-shirts printed with forbidden code to mock the idea of algorithms too dangerous to share.

It was stupid, and I was ashamed of the regulatory state, but we got better.

we have not gotten any better. our t-shirt snark has, regrettably, faded.

extraduder_ire2• 3 years ago

Kind of tangential, but I'm really saddened by Id not releasing the source code to their engines since Doom 3 BFG-ish. I know he doesn't work there anymore, but I got reminded earlier today when Linus (of techtips fame) lamented the fact that there's only a single game that runs on the fantastic Id tech 7 engine.

At least Demonware will get direct unlicensed access to their netcode when Microsoft finally buys them.

kridsdale32• 3 years ago

ID was bought by Bethesda, bought by Zenimax, bought by Microsoft. Those suits don't see the personal gain from release.

kromem• 3 years ago

Nearly every comment is missing his take given the title here.

He's not saying everything should be open source.

He's saying that the right to have an open source version of anything is what we should be absolutists about.

So not that every OS, or encryption, or AI model should be open - but that people should fight and stand up for the right to have access to open OSes, encryption, or AI models if produced.

Windows can exist, but shouldn't be able to prevent Linux from existing basically.

That's the absolutism. He hasn't suddenly turned into Stallman.

drewcoo• 3 years ago

> a great many of the software tools used by the most powerful companies in the world are the exact same ones available to hospitals, students, and everyone else. For free. And not just to use, but to inspect, modify, extend, and redistribute.

That does not say that open source is great because it copies closed source.

Nor does the term "absolutism."

Carmack is pushing for open source, just like the title would imply.

kazinator• 3 years ago

He's not saying everything should be open source.

He'd have to move to a Mastodon instance for that not to look stupid.

zeofig• 3 years ago

why?

sashimimono2• 3 years ago

The beautiful idea of having "free/libre/opensource software" is worth nothing, if there is no code available at all.

squigz2• 3 years ago

There's a certain level of irony about this being posted on Twitter.

prepend3• 3 years ago

What’s the irony?

Would it be ironic if he typed it on an iPhone? Or transmitted it over a public spectrum licensed exclusively to some carrier? Or washed his hands with soap purchased from a store?

It’s ok to use non-FLOSS things. But it’s bad to ban FLOSS or be confused over whether something is or is not FLOSS.

squigz2• 3 years ago

I was being a bit flippant, but you are right of course :)

bmc75053• 3 years ago

I am a firm believer in open source, with the caveat that authors should always and everywhere have ultimate say over how to release their own work, never legislators or courts. FOSS may be the morally and technically preferable choice for many projects but is not inherently superior, and there are several advantages to going proprietary - plenty of examples where paid software is actually higher quality, regardless of whether it is developed in the open. This is also likely to be the case with ML software. If you want nice things then pay for them, but ultimately authors should be able to retain full creative freedom and executive control over their own software and let the marketplace decide.

guappa• 3 years ago

To me your comment sounds self contradicting.

bmc75053• 3 years ago

Nope. I support open source and personally release all my work in the open, but also support authors' freedom to distribute their own work however they wish and users' freedom to choose between them. These are fully consistent views.

patmorgan23• 3 years ago

Legislatures write copyright/patent law, that law dictates how you are allowed to release works.

All software becomes open source after its patents/copyrights expire.

bmc75053• 3 years ago

How would you access the source code of an encrypted program after copyright expiration if the author is dead and gives no one the keys? You might be thinking of public domain?

smashah• 3 years ago

Absolutism includes the right to repair (our software) which extends to the right to reverse engineer. Unfortunately those are both untenable at the moment as there is no legal mechanism to support or fight for those rights

To create such a mechanism there needs to be an open source union that doesn't just help people with x y or z license.

Just like how the unions fought for workers rights, this OSS union would fight for digital and coder's rights.

prepend3• 3 years ago

The most critical step here is to print a completely functional, with model, llm algorithm on a t-shirt.

npteljes• 3 years ago

I especially would like formats and protocols to be open source and freely available. Do you remember the state of digital video in the 90s, 2000s? Absolute clusterfuck of codecs, players, really ugly software being pushed upon users because they were the only way to play a specific piece of media. The UX sucked, people hated it, so codec pack installers, and then free players that bundled codecs became popular, VLC became popular, then streaming video became popular, and now we were back to square one, because no two browser supported the same video formats. But in the meantime Matroska came along, then Google bought a company with a good codec and open sourced it, and a bunch of streaming providers banded together to work on future formats, and the very similar audio advancements were bundled in the mix. And so, now we have a great, open source, royalty-free video container, a bunch of great video formats, audio formats. Browsers support it, smart appliances support it, hardware can have decoders for it, and everyone is better off because of this. It's a huge investment to iron out the details, but the pipes are infrastructure. Private ownership, and rent extraction only makes it worse, but if they are free / belong to the commons, then a lot of great things can be built on top of that.

Be an Open Source Absolutist

Related Stories