this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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xkcd

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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by [email protected] to c/xkcd
 

Title text: The heartfelt tune it plays is CC licensed, and you can get it from my seed on JoinDiaspora.net whenever that project gets going.


Transcript2003:

[Cueball approaches a bearded fellow.]

Cueball: Did you get my essay?
Bearded Fellow: Yeah, it was good! But it was a .doc; You should really use a more open-
Cueball: Give it a rest already. Maybe we just want to live our lives and use software that works, not get wrapped up in your stupid nerd turf wars.
Bearded Fellow: I just want people to care about the infrastructures we're building and who-
Cueball: No, you just want to feel smugly superior. You have no sense of perspective and are probably autistic.

2010:

Cueball: Oh my God! We handed control of our social world to Facebook and they're DOING EVIL STUFF!
Bearded Fellow: Do you see this?

[Inset, the bearded fellow rubs his index and middle fingers against his thumb.]

Bearded Fellow: It's the world's tiniest open-source violin.


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[–] nomecks 42 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I have a great idea for a program! I should describe it in agonizing detail to an AI owned by some company so it will spit out working source code. Nothing can go wrong with my plan!

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If you make it open source they can't steal your idea

[–] dustyData 4 points 1 year ago

I mean, they can still steal your idea, fork it, repackage it and charge for it while refusing to upstream their development. But now it's a licensing discussion and not a personal attack.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Apple and Google have stolen plenty of ideas. They don't care if it's closed or open.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

If they can't prevent others from using it, seems fine to me.

[–] aesthelete 10 points 1 year ago

This is a flawless plan, especially since they pinky swore that they wouldn't keep around the information you put into the black box AI. So we're all safe!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

If AI will stop people from telling me their "amazing" app ideas when they find out I'm a programmer then I'm all for it.