2023 and 'the Eternal Struggle Between Proprietary and Open Source Software'

TechCrunch argues that in 2023, 'established technologies relied on by millions hit a chaos curve, making people realize how beholden they are to a proprietary platform they have little control over.'

The OpenAI fiasco in November, where the ChatGPT hit-maker temporarily lost its co-founders, including CEO Sam Altman, created a whirlwind five days of chaos culminating in Altman returning to the OpenAI hotseat. But only after businesses that had built products atop OpenAI's GPT-X large language models (LLMs) started to question the prudence of going all-in on OpenAI, with 'open' alternatives such as Meta's Llama-branded family of LLMs well-positioned to capitalize.

Even Google seemingly acknowledged that 'open' might trump 'proprietary' AI, with a leaked internal memo penned by a researcher that expressed fears that open source AI was on the front foot. 'We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI,' the memo noted.

Elsewhere, Adobe's $20 billion megabucks bid to buy rival Figma — a deal that eventually died due to regulatory headwinds — was a boon for open source Figma challenger Penpot, which saw signups surge amid a mad panic that Adobe might be about to unleash a corporate downpour on Figma's proverbial parade. And when cross-platform game engine Unity unveiled a controversial new fee structure, developers went berserk, calling the changes destructive and unfair. The fallout caused Unity to do a swift about turn, but only after a swathe of the developer community started checking out open source rival Godot, which also now has a commercial company driving core development.

Thanks to wiggles (Slashdot reader #30,088) for sharing the article.

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