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This week’s split in the open source world is an alarming scenario for founders building companies on top of open source AI models.
It’s also a reminder that open source means a lot, and the details matter to investors.
Matt Mullenweg, lead developer of WordPress and CEO of Automattic, is embroiled in a bitter battle with the team at WP Engine. WP Engine is one of many companies that offers a hosted version of open source WordPress with additional services and features built on top. He accused WP Engine, owned by Silicon Valley private equity giant Silver Lake, of unfairly charging extra fees for WordPress.org’s services and failing to donate its share to open source projects. They accuse the company of profiting from the confusion of Engine’s name.
WP Engine first sent out cease and desist letters after Mullenweg and Automattic updated their official WordPress.org blog with accusations against the company. On Thursday, he banned WP Engine from accessing WordPress.org tools such as themes and plugins, and the company continues to deal with legal claims.
Mullenweg has drawn heat from some developers because of his dual role as CEO of Automattic, a for-profit company that sells WordPress hosting and competes with WP Engine, and as the driving force behind the nonprofit WordPress.org, which he owns and oversees. It’s attracting attention. WordPress name and logo trademarks.
When I spoke to Mullenweg about the controversy, he insisted that the case is very simple. “WP Engine could easily run all of these services on its own. It could mirror all the code and run its own update server or plugin directory. They’re choosing not to, and their customers By using WordPress.org’s millions of dollars of server resources to serve our customers, we are essentially choosing to subsidize our own services.”
A WP Engine spokesperson referred us to their official statement regarding X.
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The good and bad actors in this story probably depend on where you are in the open source ecosystem.
Mullenweg is the co-founder and lead developer of WordPress, which launched in 2003, and a longtime evangelist, championing an open internet unencumbered by platforms and profit-driven incentives. We have earned a lot of trust. But he’s not opposed to turning it into a business, founding Automattic and even investing $25,000 in WP Engine years ago.
Meanwhile, developers who use WP Engine to streamline their WordPress work are venting on Reddit about serious issues arising from what appears to be a minor trademark dispute. Some have accused Mullenweg of losing control. (Mullenweg pointed out to me that people are friendlier at Hacker News.)
This story is a warning to founders that open source can mean many things, and your business model may depend on those definitions.
In generative AI, different parts of the AI model can be open or closed to varying degrees, including the source code, model weights, and the training data itself. Developers of AI-based models like Meta typically don’t release all their training data as part of open source licenses, investors said. Instead, developers are given the opportunity to change the model weights and fine-tune the model to suit their purposes.
Similar to older open source companies, most AI application startups built on open source offer subscription services with unique features alongside professional services. For example, VC darling LangChain, which describes itself as an “open source framework and developer toolkit,” offers services such as developer workflows for building apps and agents, and offers services such as developer workflows for building apps and agents through subscription or usage fees. , we charge developers for features we deem to be worth a premium. .
Ideally, open source projects involving AI need strong multi-person governance, says Natalia Levina, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business.
“Conventional wisdom about open source is that you want to be part of a project that has good governance. If you have good governance, it’s best for one party to take away support or change the license. It shouldn’t be a decision,” she said.
Of course, that’s often not the reality.
There are clear benefits to building with open source software. You can gain rapid adoption and goodwill within the developer community, and start building a revenue stream with a relatively small investment.
Additionally, the open source model performs nearly as well as proprietary models from OpenAI and Gemini. According to the latest LMSYS Chatbot Arena Leaderboard statistics, OpenAI’s latest releases still outperform the competition, but lower down the rankings the scores of Flash, the cheaper model of GPT-4 and Gemini, and the leading open There is no significant difference between the source model’s score.
Venture capitalists need look no further than Red Hat for proof that big league companies can be built from open source core. The Linux-based enterprise software vendor was acquired by IBM in 2019 for $34 billion in cash. It’s the largest technology acquisition in history, but it took 25 years to build.
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silicon valley chatter
Bloomberg’s Ashley Vance’s tweet about an anonymous VC accusing the tech world of losing many founders to the psychedelic South American plant ayahuasca has sparked a lot of controversy. Austin Allred suggested that psychedelics kill entrepreneurship.
Meanwhile, Airbnb’s Brian Chesky shared the famous story of Steve Jobs’ endorsement of LSD, which refuted the Valley’s conventional wisdom that drugs are at worst neutral and have many benefits. It helped establish it. Material experimentation and enjoyment are perhaps a core part of this culture.
But Marc Andreessen wasn’t like that, leaning into the gateway drug debate with a reefer-crazy view.
In our humble opinion, all medicines are not created equal. It seems wrong to mix cannabis and LSD with highly addictive drugs like heroin and cocaine. A mind-altering drug is much more likely to connect Silicon Valley’s free-thinking mind and spirit than a Wall Street banker-style drug that turns you into an abrasive egoist with too much faith in your own talents. It feels like a match.
But there’s always the risk that you’ll come back from your psychedelic trip and decide the grocery delivery startup has bad vibes.
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