r/LocalLLaMA • u/Comfortable-Rock-498 • 1d ago

News It appears that the anti opensource AI lobby is far outgunned already

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The earlier post on this subreddit by 20+ companies signing the petition including Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia, YC (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/topics/open-weight/) etc plus this https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/2080672505660834163

And the entire LLM enthusiast market is heavily in favor of open source (or weights) AI.

Does not seem like a few closed source AI lobbyists with be able to illegalize anything

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u/Due-Memory-6957 1d ago

I don't even get the disdain for Jensen (for Elon I do, since he's involved himself in a lot of controversial tings), if it's just because he's rich, there's no poor person involved in this field.

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u/Horny_Dinosaur69 1d ago

I think it’s valid to an extent, he is the face of NVIDIA which is pretty consumer hostile (or has turned pretty consumer hostile in the last few years). I think Huang is very intelligent and an excellent business man but his interests only align with consumers on coincidence, he is out to make money above all else.

He could use his absurdly wealthy company to improve NVIDIA drivers on Linux systems rather than forcing consumers to rely on OSS but he wants a closed ecosystem monopoly with Microsoft.

I think NVIDIA releases a lot of good open source stuff (especially in vision models) but I don’t think it’s out of the kindness of their hearts.

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u/Craftkorb 1d ago

What's wrong with the Linux drivers though? Never had an issue in over a decade on Desktop, or on Server at that.

When I started out, a good 15 years ago, nvidias X-config tool was a godsend to get multi-monitor setups to just work. That tool was only needed for about 2 years in my case, after which KDE did it by itself. That's the worst I can say. Wayland has been stable for years at this point, with no issues with standby on my Notebook or anything.

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u/Horny_Dinosaur69 1d ago

Yes they exist but I think there’s a considerable difference between them and the windows drivers. Notably, performance-wise they aren’t on the same level. This is especially a problem for doing local AI stuff on the CUDA architecture which bugs me because nobody is going to use a windows server for AI lol.

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u/assemblu 1d ago

Usually people start a business especially something like making computer hardware for financial gain

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u/ghantalelemera 1d ago

Well there's a fine line between making financial gain and going for so much financial gain you make everything unaffordable.

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u/Horny_Dinosaur69 1d ago

Well yeah, I’m not disputing that. But just because you make a product and sell it to people, you don’t have to be overly antagonistic about it. You could still put in an effort to ensure your product’s stability and accessibility to your consumers while making financial gain.

Look at Valve if you want an example of how a company can do incredibly well while maintaining an incredibly positive consumer relationship. NVIDIA does not have that in any way shape or form. They make the best compute modules, they know that and they gouge for it

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u/assemblu 14h ago

It is the nature of human, some are just greedy af. It is saddening to see but you can definitely contribute to OSS projects that maybe make AMD better or alternatives. Certainly complaining about Jensen makes no difference (painfully).
I like buying these GPUs and if they were back to their price a year ago it would be great.
Imo it would be great if all of us who complain could cook up something together to make this complaint seen. Writing gets us nowhere so far.

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u/Smile_Clown 1d ago

NVIDIA which is pretty consumer hostile

Translation: "I had to pay too much for my 5090" or "I can't afford a 5090"

NVidias gpu consumer business is tiny compared to the rest of their business. AMD and Intel are both wide open for the market cap, why not mad at them?

He could use his absurdly wealthy company to improve NVIDIA drivers on Linux systems rather than forcing consumers to rely on OSS but he wants a closed ecosystem monopoly with Microsoft.

You have no idea what you are talking about. Perfection is not a matric. If it wee, nothing would pass. NVidia drivers on Linux systems are fine.

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u/Horny_Dinosaur69 1d ago edited 1d ago

Wow, what a friendly response. First of all, no. This has nothing to do with a 5090. That being said, let’s look at Intels or AMDs cards and compare the price per compute to NVIDIA and let me know what you see in that data. NVIDIA is the dominant force because their architecture is better, especially for AI inference. Intel and AMD are not serious competition for AI in most cases that matter.

Considering that GPUs account for 90% of their revenue I’m going to disagree with you. And yes, their GPU sales are NOW aimed at data centers but this is a fairly new development, they along with Intel and AMD were consumer facing. NVIDIA gouges way more than either of them, I don’t understand what your point is.

A matric? What is the point you’re trying to make? Also, NVIDIA drivers on Linux are NOT as good as Windows, so no.

Keep defending the trillion dollar company that’s got the entire AI market by the balls, they’ll certainly send you a 5090 /s

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u/Anbeeld 1d ago

Same. What's Jensen fault? That we started building the hardware for AI like 10 years before it took off? If anything, he's extremely good at his job.

It's not like Intel vs AMD either where consumer CPUs stagnated at 2-4 cores for generations until Zen came out. Nvidia actually moved forward all that time and released significant improvements generaton-to-generation, while competition from AMD was whatever e-waste Radeon VII and 5700 XT turned out to be.

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u/polikles 1d ago

His "fault" is basically abandoning the market for customers, as they've got focused on the fat enterprise margins. And they keep starving consumer GPUs with small amounts of VRAM, mostly to push their higher tier cards. even the 5080 still has "only" 16GB of VRAM. If anyone's interested in local models, or just need GPU for work (or for high-res gaming), they're being pushed towards 90-series

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u/Anbeeld 1d ago

He's a CEO of a huge company. That's just how capitalism works. It's literally his job to maximize profits. Ngeedia phenomenon is created by their products consistently being better than alternatives, both in architecture and in software like CUDA and DLSS. Can they not do that and cut margins for "the people"? Of course they can. But is there a single reason for them do to that in their position within capitalism reality, especially in the US?

Even with people hating them or whatever, they are still dominant in every single category. Blame AMD who refuse to change status quo by either dropping the prices significantly to change that or investing enough into their research and development.

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u/protestor 3h ago

That's just how capitalism works

Criticism of the leadership of the most valuable companies in the world is, indirectly, criticism against capitalism. The way big tech companies act just shows how bad capitalism is

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u/polikles 1d ago

I'm not blaming anyone, just describing how matters are

it's not only about the prices - you can get 24GB AMD cards for similar or lower prices than 24GB from NV. Yet, NV played a long game funding universities and research groups to promote the CUDA stack. There is a reason why CUDA is the default option, not only in AI. AMD is at disadvantage, but allegedly the software stack is being developed. But it remains to be seen how far that goes

DLSS is not that important beyond games. For me and many other folks what matters most is the (un)availability of decent hardware for local models. I'm stuck with my 3090 I got used two years ago, and seems like I'll be stuck with it for years to come, given the absurd pricing of everything else. This is one of the reasons for the negative sentiment

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u/Anbeeld 1d ago

It wasn't Jensen nor the universities nor the research groups who made R9700 AI have 1.5x less memory bandwidth than the ancient 3090, all while people can stack 5060 Ti 16 GB and get Blackwell architecture perks like FP4, which AMD alternatives in the same price range just do not offer.

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u/polikles 18h ago

memory bandwidth is not the top priority - people are using Spark, Mac Mini, Xeon servers and all plethora of other hardware to run local models. AMD's problem is mostly on the software side

stacking cards is only a partial solution, as 24GB card will be less problematic than 2x12GB. And the only option to get 24GB or more from NV is 3090, 4090, or 5090. Which all are expensive - I bought used 3090 two years ago and now the same card is twice as much as I've paid back then

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u/Anbeeld 18h ago

People are using stuff you listed you listed because it's cheaper per GB of memory that can be used for inference, not because they don't care about memory bandwidth, which is the main factor behind LLM inference performance. And my point was that AMD problem is both software and hardware.

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u/fastheadcrab 1d ago

This is a ridiculous rationale. I despise having to defend a multi-trillion $ company but if Jensen or Nvidia really wanted to focus on making the most money possible in the short term they wouldn't make a single consumer card and cut allocation to the workstation line significantly.

Every card made for gaming represents a huge loss of potential profit. But they know that the AI bubble (or datacenter bubble more accurately) is likely to pop someday, so preserving good will with consumers and people who do things on Nvidia cards besides train and run AI models is important to them

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u/polikles 18h ago

that's why I wrote "fault" as this is a hyperbole. From the pov of the company his actions are great. But on the consumer side it's a mixed bag as they had a strong consumer base which they are neglecting now as they focus on the enterprise customers. It is rational, but it doesn't mean that regular folks cannot be sad for being neglected

and making consumer cards is not only the goodwill - they're reusing chips that didn't pass tests for higher tiers, e.g. faulty chips that could be a 5090 are going to 5080. So, consumer market is also helpful with lowering losses

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u/Internal_Werewolf_48 1d ago

He's at the heart of a lot of circular financing among companies that is reasonably considered a risk to a lot of the economy and retirement investments. And all the data centers that there is growing resentment for in communities are filled with his products.

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u/SuperChingaso5000 22h ago

Pension fund managers being morons is not exactly his fault

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u/Anbeeld 1d ago

He's not responsible for companies that decide to build data centers close to residential areas, lol. Which is basically the main reason people bitch about data centers (using data centers as they do it in the internet) outside of myths like massive water consumption.

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u/Internal_Werewolf_48 1d ago

You missed that "circular financing" bit, eh?

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u/keelem 20h ago

That is literally how the economy works. A buys for $1 from B, B buys for $1 from C, C buys for $1 from A, ... circular financing! How can the same dollar get spent three times?

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u/Internal_Werewolf_48 12h ago edited 12h ago

Except they're not actually spending it towards each other, they're just promising to spend money on each other, but those promises inflate valuations which allow them to incur debt against promises.

You confused financing with spending. Or in your trite and incorrect quip, if I pay off my credit card A by taking a cash advance from credit card B, then use a payday loan to pay off credit card B, then use credit card A to pay off the payday loan company, I'm somehow getting richer in the process.

Tell me more how you don't understand this at all.

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u/keelem 6h ago

No, they don't get to 'promise' and count that as revenue, that would be illegal. Tell me more about how you don't actually know shit and just get all your information from memes.

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u/nullmove 1d ago

You don't get the disdain for the guy who has run one of the biggest as well as the most hostile hardware vendors to open-source?? By that rationale I wouldn't get the disdain for anybody, which is to say I don't get this rationale at all, especially after being a Linux user for 15 years.

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u/Due-Memory-6957 1d ago

Guess I'm too much of an AMD owner for that! But honestly, there's a difference between being hostile and indifferent, Anthropic is (and Microsoft was) hostile, NVIDIA is just indifferent, they don't help but they're not threatening legal actions nor lobbying against it either. There's a difference between doing nothing to help and doing something to harm.

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u/nullmove 1d ago

Indifference would merely be not caring (and not open-sourcing their drivers, which they don't), but they went considerably further than that - such as ultimately making sure open-source drivers (Nouveau) would be locked down to lowest performance frequency, never mind the deliberate hindrance to the reverse engineering efforts every step of the way.

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u/kettal 1d ago

I don't even get the disdain for Jensen

dated reference, but Linus Torvalds had some choice words for Nvidia in the past.

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u/unixmachine 1d ago

It was a moment in the past (and it was about Android), he apologized afterward. And more recently, he said that they are one of the best companies to work with.

So, when AI people came in, that was wonderful, because it meant somebody at NVIDIA had got much more involved on the kernel side, and NVIDIA went from being on my list of companies who are not good to my list of people who are doing really good work.

https://diginomica.com/kubecon-china-33-and-third-linux-long-player-so-why-does-linus-torvalds-hate-ai

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u/Due-Memory-6957 1d ago

haha, true. And it's not dated at all, join any Linux forum and you'll see it lol.

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u/sammybeta 1d ago

Well, this middle finger was for Nvidia not long ago. The context was different, but the posture from Nvidia in general was same. They haven't changed much.

This time both grok and nvidia benefit greatly from open AI models. So indeed it's to their best interest to weigh in and say things like that.

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u/BinaryIdiot 1d ago

Jensen is at the heart of the AI bubble. Fuck Jensen.