Haha we are not unique there. We chose AGPL-3 as well -- become some would argue it's like an open source virus -- everything it touches must become open source! How exciting.
I did desktop UI testing a couple years ago on Windows apps, and the standards solution there is to use UI Automation, which itself works by sending messages to each app that makes them run internal queries to find elements.
It seems like quite the intuitive approach, but we quickly discovered that due to differing implementations, and the reliance on the apps actually cooperating with you, it's actually so much more reliable and much faster to use OpenCV to physically detect UI elements by appearance.
There's an easy way to avoid being sued though: comply with AGPL and make your own work open-source as well.
The “problem” with AGPL is companies who want to use open source software to build proprietary stuff on top without contributing anything back. AGPL is purposely designed to avoid this kind of parasitic behavior, but that doesn't make it “not open source” quite the opposite: it's “forced open-source”.
It is indeed restricting companies' freedom though: their freedom to restrict their user's freedom.
Sure and I am all for it; I am just saying what my clients say to us. So for them (and it’s most of them, even if they never have any intention of changing the source code, ever), if it’s this license, they won’t touch it. That’s coming from their lawyers, no matter what we/I say.
It's always the same story with web scraping product building: On the surface it's very interesting work. There is joy in seeing the fruits of your work automating human hours. There is also pain in seeing race to the bottom in that its very tough to get a recurring client who is always looking to reduce the cost.
One concern I have with this is I don't see the benefit of using a fuzzy blackbox in an area that has largely been solved with traditional tree-based one-shot approaches that doesn't require AI.
Granularity and explicitness is often written off as expensive in this space but throwing a large model at a largely solved problem with existing tools and techniques seems spirit of the times.
what are some other solutions that can browse the web for me and do what I ask. The requirement is that it should take natural language instructions as input.
Asking this question on a platform pretty much aligned with Sam Altman and expecting real nuanced answer is unrealistic.
Remember they shut down the thread regarding Sam Altman's sister alleging she was molested by him.
Its just incredibly sad to see how society is quick to overlook one's transgressions if it stands to benefit from that individual. Artists, CEOs, politicians, celebrities.
Just one sick world and this blatant disregard for "non-profit" because bunch of men feel they were chosen.
The Google Search API was one of the first big Web 2.0 examples of an API. Basically every big colorful "how to do APIs" or "learn JavaScript" book in Barnes and Nobles used the Google Search API as their main example of what an API was and how useful it was until 2011 or so, when Google started turning it down.
Now I'm curious how many tech companies actively used questionable practices to build their foundation, then lobbied to make those practices illegal to mitigate competition. I've a feeling this is so common that they don't even see the irony in it anymore.
Don't you remember the open letter for getting current AI devs to halt under some false premise while the true reasoning was to give time for the late starters to catch up?
These people have no morals, and if social media were to suddenly disappear, I think the planet and all that live on it would be better for it
I read The PayPal Wars and it was wild to me how the author goes back and forth between complaining about how much regulation sucks and talking about how great it was that could take advantage of regulation in their fight about eBay.
To be fair, they didn't say that what Stability AI did was illegal, just that they didn't like it and were banning the people involved from their service.
