I really like how nvidia started doing more normal open source and not locking stuff behind a login to their website. It makes it so much easier now that you can just pip install all the cuda stuff for torch and other libraries without authenticating and downloading from websites and other nonsense. I guess they realized that it was dramatically reducing the engagement with their work. If it’s open source anyway then you should make it as accessible as possible.
I would argue that this isn't "normal open source", though it is indeed not locked behind a login on their website. The license (1) is feels very much proprietary, even if the source code is available.
"2.7 You may not use the Software for the purpose of developing competing products or technologies or assist a third party in such activities."
vs
"California’s public policy provides that every contract that restrains anyone from engaging in a lawful profession, trade, or business of any kind is, to that extent, void, except under limited statutory exceptions."
“To that extent” in this context means that the remainder of the contract stays valid. The interpretation you state is not only incorrect, it would be toothless to introduce it because people could simply work around it by adding that clause and arguing that it constitutes a sufficient exception under the law.
As for why the “to the extent” phrasing exists, consider an example: an employment contract consists of two clauses, A: that prevents the employee from disclosing confidential customer data to third parties, and B: a non-compete clause (which does come under the same provision mentioned by grandparent). If the employer ever sues an employee for violation of A, they shouldn’t be allowed to argue that they aren’t subject to it because of clause B.
Hey, that's a real argument, and it makes sense. Thank you for helping to clarify this topic.
Question: why would NVIDIA, makers of general intelligence, which seems to compete with everyone, publish code for software nobody can use without breaking NVIDIA rules? Wouldn't it be better for everyone if they just kept that code private?
FYI, the FTC noncompete rule does not go into effect until September, and it specifically carves out an exception to the rule for existing noncompetes for senior executives
In a similar fashion, you'll see that JAX has frontend code being open-sourced, while device-related code is distributed as binaries. For example, if you're on Google's TPU, you'll see libtpu.so, and on macOS, you'll see pjrt_plugin_metal_1.x.dylib.
The main optimizations (scheduler, vectorizer, etc.) are hidden behind these shared libraries. If open-sourced, they might reveal hints about proprietary algorithms and provide clues to various hardware components, which could potentially be exploited.
That's what open-source means. Source code is open for reading. It has nothing to do with Licensing. You can have any type of license on top of that based on your business needs
That may be your definition, but that's not everyone's definition. Wikipedia, for example, says:
> Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose.
there has been a rise of "open"-access and freeware software/services in this space. see hugging face and certain models tied to accounts that accept some eula before downloading model weights, or weird wrapper code by ai library creators which makes it harder to run offline (ultralytics library comes to mind for instance).
i like the value they bring, but the trend is against the existing paradigm of how python ecosystem used to be.
