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To be honest with you, I consider most examples of companies releasing open source software to be commoditizing their complements and streamlining recruiting, not altruism.

The result can be altruistic, I guess, but my point is that judging intentions with regards to open source on the part of large companies is a fool's errand in my opinion.

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good point, what do you think about tensorflow, openai gym, python, apache foundation, linux foundation? you gotta have some love for open source if you're a developer. i might not be as well read as you but i would like to be corrected if my thoughts are incoherent. also i don't think it is about altruism so i agree with you, there's mutual incentive to open source things like tensorflow i.e. to speed up development.

I use Tensorflow, but it's a fantastic example of my point. Google open sourced Tensorflow because the real strategic advantage in machine learning is data and talent. By commoditizing the software used for machine learning, they broaden the market for their expensive, high margin data, and lower the barrier for talent to enter the industry which they can hire.

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