FOSS in the Age of AI

I don’t talk about politics. I don’t post random, meandering, half baked thoughts. But its Friday and I’m going to do both today. Specifically, about Fable 5, open source software and AI more generally.

A common reaction I’ve seen to the US government’s restrictions placed on Fable 5 is an increased call for sovereign AI. While, especially outside the USA, that might pass the sniff test, it does feel a little like swapping Coca Cola for Pepsi. I’m sure the purveyors of anything sovereign AI/ hardware/ compute related will push this answer but its incomplete at best and deliberately misleading at worst.

Firstly, this assumes that USA based entities are perfectly happy with suddenly losing access to technology. I suspect that’s not the case. And this is your first clue that the answer doesn’t lie in further entrenching notions of an AI race with control granted to nation states and their proxies.

I’m not going to even pretend I know where the answer does lie. I do not. I will refer you back to my opening line.

However, for a long time, a sensible yin to the yang of proprietary software has been FOSS, free and open source software. The Linux to your Windows. The HT Condor to your IBM Symphony. Whilst it was nice that its free as in free beer, what has always been more important was that it was free as in available to inspect and change and use without restriction.

It’s that last part that is a clue to the right solution.

Unfortunately, FOSS has been having a rough time of late. Even before AI snuck into the party.

Whilst the XKCD meme of the internet being held together by one unpaid programmer in Nebraska is undoubtedly true, it is also true that that huge proportion of open source software today is paid for by commercial entities. As a result, we’ve seen several examples of “rug pull” license changes undermining confidence in open source software. Recent developments such as Malus for AI washing open source complicate things even further.

It would appear that without a solid commercial incentive, there is little reason to pursue anything open source, let alone anything as challenging as an alternative to Fable 5. P.S. open weights != open source. Though it’s a start, I guess. 

So how do we fix this? I still don’t know, but I do know that it has to come down to you and I. Big tech won’t fix it for us. An AI “race” and counting on other nation states with their own agendas won’t fix it either (though it might provide some short-term alternatives).

Even the “worst” companies have “good” people working in them. It’s down to us, you and I, to think of and provide use cases and justifications that can align with the corporate vision but produce ancillary benefits. We managed with projects such as Kubernetes.

FOSS becomes both harder and more important in an age of AI. I don’t know how we do it. I just know that we have to.

Feel free to tell me I’m wrong? Or grab me for a coffee to talk about it at ISC.