I just watched a $3,000 laptop beat OpenAI’s best model at something that actually matters.
Not at generating poetry or philosophical musings. Planning a real trip to Ecuador that you could book today without embarrassing yourself or blowing your budget.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
TL;DR: OpenAI charges you $20/month to use GPT-5. I ran it against free models on my laptop. The laptop models didn’t just compete. They won at the stuff that actually matters. Your laptop doesn’t have shareholders. It has you.
You didn't even try running a model remotely as large as GPT-5. This is like someone running Gemma 270m on a Raspberry Pi and declaring that it's faster than your Macbook.
What I’m saying is that a model not as large out performed in my prompt which is I imagine complex enough to cover a lot of consumers needs. Not to mention, with the right setup, it’d be easy to forward the prompts that need the foundational models through openrouter and only get charged API token prices per use.
I would love to know the very specific definition of open source you are referring too. I believe there are multiple very specific definitions that are drastically different, from Stallman's "Free Software" to "Open Source" to "Creative Commons" and the flavors in-between. The proliferation of Open Source Licenses seems to suggest that it's not as clear as your myopic viewpoint suggests.
"The ability to produce derived works is a key attribute of open source." Where did you get that gem from?
"but what I'm looking for is a clear and legally enforceable license, which seems to still be missing." As far as I know the only OS License that has been deemed enforceable is GNU General Public License.
It's free software and the code is viewable, what's so hard to understand?
> As far as I know the only OS License that has been deemed enforceable is GNU General Public License.
The OSI recognizes a number of different licenses, as do the attorneys of the numerous individuals and companies making use of them.
> It's free software
It's not, unless I have a legal right to redistribute a modified copy.
"Open source" and "free software" both have requirements to meet their respective definitions. And additonally, "source is viewable" is not the same thing as a license.
OpenSource.org doesn't own the definition of "Open Source." It's a concept and idea interpreted and implemented by lots of people in different ways meaning different things.
No one gets to "own" what open source means.
But, in their definition: "The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software."
All that says is that derived works are allowed under the same terms as the original software, which technically could enforce a royalty payment to the original for any derivative, how would that sit with you?
You're conflating community and cultural definitions with legal precedents and enforceability. GNU GPL is the only enforceable one in a US (and I think UK) court of law.
In the end of the day, what's the argument - you want the software creator to use a LICENSE you approve of or else not call their software release "free" or "open" because you feel that misleading?
Literally the purpose of the Open Source Initiative is to provide definition to what open source is and is not, and to prevent openwashing by companies and individuals presenting their non-open software as open source.
I'm not going to argue with someone who thinks open source is a feeling subject to their own personal interpretations in lieu of license.
> OpenSource.org doesn't own the definition of "Open Source."
Don't they, though? "Open Source" is not even a natural turn of phrase like "Free Software" is. Open Source is a strange phrase made up to describe a specific thing, and that thing is not that the source is available to be viewed.
edit: Also, thinking that the GPL is the only enforceable software license is just strange.
I was watching a stream at one time (wish I had a link, but it was a Microsoft project), and they called that concept 'source open' (viewable but not not modifiable).
"Open Source" is not a strange phrase. It's the natural phrase for software that doesn't keep its source secret (or "closed", a common synonym for secret). This is so natural that the intelligence community has a parallel definition of "open source" that refers to non-secret/publicly available intelligence sources.
I understand that in practice, ESR successfully muscled others out and claimed effective cultural ownership of the phrase, but that doesn't mean that no one else is allowed to try to stake their claim and see if it sticks.
I personally think the unlimited redistribution clauses that are mandatory for "Open Source" licenses have caused some serious problems. Commercial vendors have improperly conflated the distribution of source code with the complete inability to make any money from it.
The problem, of course, is not that the source is available and people are free to tweak and understand what's happening on their own machines, but that the licenses which open-source programs grew up under made serious commercial sales effectively impossible. The only business model that's viable is selling support. Compare the market caps of Oracle and Microsoft to Red Hat for an illustration of the comparative effectiveness of these models.
Stallman at least swapped commercial viability out for the infectious nature of copyleft, intended to keep as much software free and shareable as possible. Permissive BSD/MIT family licenses just give it up.
The argument you've started here isn't meaningful. The project we're talking about doesn't (AFAICT) declare any license, so the fact that it's not open source (in the usual sense of "released under an open-source license") hardly warrants arguing.
The "problematic" bit is that the project's page describes it as open-source, says "you can even make improvements", etc., though the project isn't actually licensed that way (or at all).
Flatiron School has published an audited 3rd party job report about the success of our graduates. http://flatironschool.com/jobs-report-2014 AFAIK we're the only school to actually do that and not just talk about it. Additionally, if you're into more of a narrative, check out our annual report. http://far.flatironschool.com/
Yeah. This seems odd. I get you're running a business but ostensibly the reason for this report is to allow people to view the legitimacy of the program and not as a means to get people on your mailing list.
I like that they present solutions that let you load ENV vars from YAML, sort of like a best of both worlds. Maintaining ENV Shell across multiple servers is even harder so YAML works well.
So what's the story of the school and the name? I have a few friends who love the idea. Seems like the right idea at the right time for people who are interested in jumpstarting a coding career.
School is in the Flatiron district in NYC, named after the Flatiron Building, the world's first skyscraper. You can find more about the school on flatironschool.com - email info@flatironschool.com with questions.
Great resource, thanks. I think we need tools like these.
I'm trying to build a service to help devs get paid for their contribution to the Open Source community and to get things done faster and hopefully better by paying for development.
I think that's standard for SCSS, it does it when I'm creating Rails web applications, but i'm new to Rails and there's probably a setting to toggle somewhere.
