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when has opensource ever spearheaded independent innovation? they usually follow along.

Fred Wilson once did a take on all trends in SV. First some firm comes out with a product that changes the landscape and makes a massive profit. Then some little firm comes along and does the same for a cheaper price. Then some ambitious group out of college comes out with an open-source version of the same.

Open source has never been a trailblazer of innovation. Open "research" was the original mantra for open ai. And an entrepreneur in residence put together a great product. If they were any more open, it would not make sense.



> Open source has never been a trailblazer of innovation.

Except for, you know, all the major programming languages and Linux, which make all that innovation possible in the first place. Also, everything OpenAI is doing is based on open source stuff from Google and others, so…


True. Should have added open research has given lots of puzzle pieces for innovation.

And open source products has led to many individual contributions.

But again it's never been a trailblazer for innovation.


This could not be more untrue.

The world is littered with businesses that operate as commercial wrappers around open source technology. Ever heard of GitHub? What about MacOS? AWS?


Ahh. Looks like I misspoke.

The first line should have been "Paradigm shifting innovations have never started as open source."

Yes, open source has helped many people innovate.




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