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Comment by sk0g | Hacker News Reader

Why are you attacking a "fanbase" mentality when there is none? YOLO stood for a series of networks and subsequent improvements by PJ Redmon, derivative work like PP-YOLO still signals that it's derivative work, but ones like "YOLOv5" signal that it's an updated/ improved version, which it is not.

This weird defence pretty much confirms that Ultralytics and Roboflow are related though.

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Just chiming in: I had the similar concerns about Roboflow initially, but to my surprise @josephofiowa from Roboflow reached out to me to discuss it. They set aside time to specifically address a lot of the concerns I raised – e.g. that they seemed to be hyping up a model without doing appropriate benchmarks (they later did a thorough benchmark: https://blog.roboflow.ai/yolov4-versus-yolov5/).

They didn't need to do this. Part of my conversation was "I get it, you're a startup, you have to focus on business value rather than research concerns." But they made the time, and put in the effort, and I feel compelled to at least mention that that happened.

Also, @pjreddie has said that he's "happy for anyone to keep using the YOLO name! Just try to avoid version number collisions": https://twitter.com/pjreddie/status/1272618558254534657

Anyway, as a fellow researcher, I just wanted to put in a good word for Roboflow. Their priorities seem to be in order. I've also learned some interesting things from their yolo breakdowns, e.g. that training time on the newer models is significantly lower.

Thank you very much for the kind words.

We’re not affiliated with any of the researchers.

The many people taking issue with “v5” because it’s not by the same author as “v4” but not with “v4” even though it’s not the same author as “v3” are the “fanbases” I was referring to.

FWIW, the YOLOv4 author noted he's not opposed to Ultralytics's project (https://i.imgur.com/G00DyrX.png) as long as model comparisons are fair.

And Redmon has shared he's happy for anyone to use the YOLO name https://twitter.com/pjreddie/status/1272618558254534657

I don’t think I’m going to convince you that we don’t have some kind of hidden agenda, but we’ll continue to provide support and information about all of the new models.

YOLOv4's authors were connected to previous ones to some extent at least, unlike YOLOv5's 'authors'. I don't particularly care either way, but attacking people put off by intentionally confusing naming is probably not the best move if you're trying to establish credibility.

Apologies if I appeared to be attacking anyone. That certainly wasn’t the intention.

The YOLOv5 author has a widely used YOLOv3 implementation too. Having said that, I don't think it's a naming choice I'd have made.

But the OP is blaming the unaffiliated blog post authors for something they are just reporting.

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