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One path for developers who don't want to make a charitable donation to their friendly Fortune 500 is to pick a free software license unpalatable to corporate lawyers and then charge corpos for a commercial dual-license.

You are free to volunteer your time to Amazon, no one is stopping you. They would probably accept cash donations as well.

Selling commercial database software to big enterprises seems to work in practice for Oracle.

You're screaming into the wind. LLMs are coming for "system code" along with everything else. It no longer takes time to learn to be a systems programmer, or time to do things on a systems codebase. You can complain about the bugs the bots introduce but no one will care, least of all the bosses who are sick of paying for slow, expensive system programmers.

The fact that they ban themselves from using the free AGPL license is what makes it possible to sell them a commercial one.

>we would be happy to dual-license under a commercial license

> It’s weird because those who actually care about optimized pg gains are most likely large corporate customers. Why make a product targeting them and license it in such a way they’ll never use it?

Wait, sorry, you're asking why make something enterprise customers might pay for, and then not give it away to them for free?

> Will Facebook change its policies? No.

Going to need bigger fines. This is how they curbed the tobacco industry.

See also: Why whittlers are against lathes.

DeepSeek is really crazy cheap, though, and they don't have a giant pool of other invasive personal data to correlate it with.

Sounds good to me, let the bots read the ads instead of the humans.

Exactly: Making new/better ICs is not "deep tech" research.

Creating the first IC, creating the concept of an integrated circuit is deep tech research.

I'm told there is a category of VC who picks their investments based on github stars.

You can see how an LLM works here https://bbycroft.net/llm they are not magic.

> Integrated circuit on its own isn't doing anything unless used for something

YES! YES EXACTLY!

That's part of what makes things like ICs "deep tech" - they are transformative innovations that have no immediate application so they need government or a very well-funded far-thinking private org (e.g. Bell Labs) to bring them into being. They are not like making a new, better database.

You have just reiterated my point very concisely, so thank you.

At the risk of arguing about semantics (and not interesting database semantics) it seems half the commenters here think "deep tech" just means "like, technology you go really super DEEP into, like really dig into that DEEP DEEP HARDCORE TECHNOLOGY"

but that's not what this term has historically meant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_tech

> Deep tech innovations are often radical and may create new markets or disrupt existing ones. Deep tech companies often address big societal and environmental challenges and have potential to impact everyday life. Silicon chips are an example of innovation that enabled calculation at previously unimaginable speed and scale.

Database research is good, important, critical, even! But it's not creating something new that has never existed before. It's not inventing the transistor or the integrated circuit.

I know that many practical databases already exist and where I come from refining or improving something that already exists hardly qualifies as "deep tech". Is PepsiCo doing deep tech research on Crystal Pepsi?

However, the commenter I was responding to apparently considers just about _any_ research in any significant field to be deep tech so w/e I give up and I'll go update my CV to include the phrase "deep tech research"

I'm very excited to keep pushing the frontiers of deep tech art history, just as soon as I complete my $150M Series B raise.

Looking forward to the database analogues of IBM Watson and Tay.ai

I'm partly kidding; there's plenty of space for innovation in databases. You should sponsor https://sled.rs/

C'mon, databases are great but they are not in any way a "deep tech" field. Databases exist today in a zillion production forms as commercial products and free software.

Deep tech includes things like nuclear fusion, solid state batteries, quantum computers. I know everyone wants to feel cool, but just because your new javascript framework will be in beta for the next ten years doesn't make it "deep tech".

On the contrary, I kind of love this as form of malicious compliance. I'd wager money that the PO/BAs have been demanding "comprehensive documentation" for a very long time, and now they are getting what they've asked for good and hard.

I suspect you will not accept this (because you have been manipulated by the generator?) but there is no "I" in repeated inference calls to large language models. There is no coherent entity behind the text. Try switching backend APIs mid-session, flip from Claude to Gemini and then to ChatGPT and the output will happily burble onwards "Oops, you're right, I see my last answer contained an error..."

It's lying to users just as much as an email autoreply that pretended to be a human response is lying.

Recommended reading: https://transformer-circuits.pub/2025/attribution-graphs/bio...

Better frameworks will still help AIs avoid silly mistakes. A smarter framework means you can be productive with a dumber/cheaper AI.

You're arguing that we should be deliberately build evil and manipulative technology... why? To assert your own superior discernment?

Millions of adults get hooked by gambling, social media, and AI that pretends to be a person.

We need a better standard than "@mdp2021 thinks he's too grown up for this."

That's a lot of fancy words to say, "I think I'm too smart to fall for the same tricks that work on other humans."

How many hours did you spend on your phone last month? How many fewer hours would you have spent if the apps you interact with weren't designed to maximize "engagement"?

Irrelevant. Humans are frail and we shouldn't design systems with dark patterns that take advantage of human frailty.

Boy have I got bad news for you...

I think sensible legislation might require that commercial AI providers discourage anthropomorphisation by avoiding personal pronouns from chatbot interfaces.

"Hey, customer service chatbot, can you help me get a refund for my order?"

BAD: "Sure thing, I'll be happy to help you with that, I just need your order details..."

GOOD: "Yes, this computer system can start the refund process. Please enter your order number."

seems like someone who is knowledgeable about financial shenanigans

Sorry, maybe this speaks to my own values, but "urgency" doesn't translate to "dishonesty" in my book. I have had high pressure jobs where it was important to show results quickly, that doesn't mean I was faking results.