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Comment by ohgodplsno | Hacker News Reader

Less excited that you can't freely take work from academics to resell it in a shitty SaaS company ?

You do understand that academics are usually funded by taxpayers? Obviously, not by me, as I don't pay taxes in China, but it's not like academics are doing this work for free. Society pays them for their work so that it can benefit from its results.

You do understand that private companies, as a whole, are a drain on the academic system, pushing to lower the very taxes that fund this research ? Society should benefit from these results. The 5000th LLM-haiku-generator-saas-company-incorporated-in-delaware is not society.

Is there any breakdown of private vs government funding for general purpose academic research. I was under the impression that most of the funds in field like ML come from fees from undergrads and donations by alumnus, or by private companies.

> I was under the impression that most of the funds in field like ML come from fees from undergrads and donations by alumnus, or by private companies.

In the United States, tuition makes up less than 35% of most universities' revenue.[0] Donations are significant, but if we were to just look at research funding, it would mostly be government grants.

"The federal government is by far the largest funder of academic R&D..." [1]

[0] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cud [1] https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20202/academic-r-d-in-the-unit...

Don't worry, the private money will not go to their pocket but to fund future projects of the university, lab or whatever. It's a way to lessen the burden on taxpayers, and to shift it to those who benefit the most from it.

"Society"

quiet chuckle

So you don't use open source software? You should try it, there's a great ecosystem of free software, including lots written by academics who are happy to have their work add value to industry

I do. And I also don't use open-source software with a commercial license for my job, because I respect the wishes of the author. It doesn't make the projects, tools and libraries any less good. OP is just looking to quickly cash in to something he didn't put an ounce of effort in.

AGPL & Dual-licensing are the way forward, because of leeches.

The entitlement and audacity of people who consume open source blows me away. I've maintained a project for 12 years and recently someone wanted me to help them implement the software in their system. I politely told them that since this wasn't a bug, they would need to purchase a support package. They then accused me of trying to "sell open source software" and closed the issue. People are unbelievable. Fuck me for trying to make a living providing you personal development time, using my software that I've supported for free for over a decade.

I neither agree nor disagree with your position (still thinking about it), but I do think that's right uncharitable mind-reading you've done of GP. They never said anything about "looking to quickly cash in to something he didn't put an ounce of effort in."

Less excited that I can't freely take work from someone, create a startup that is going to resell it in a shitty SaaS company and cash out for a half B. Yes, yes I am.

In Europe we call that a success story.

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