zlacker

If someone can make money off something, after achieving global visibility, they will - it's almost an iron law. The only exceptions I can think of are Wikipedia, Archive.org, and Wikileaks.

>>toyg+(OP)
Unfortunately all of those have their own ethical issues, commercial corruption is not the only challenge to well-intentioned initiatives when meeting scale.

>>toyg+(OP)
Also almost every big open-source project? ffmpeg?

OAI is not bad for being for profit, it is bad for the bait and switch. They started off with "Open" and still have it in their name even as they turned into the next Microsoft.

>>mellos+J
What are some unethical things about Wikipedia or archive.org?

>>selest+Q7
Bias, gatekeeping and cliques on Wikipedia, overreach wrt rights law with archive.org immediately come to mind as things discussed before on HN, there are no doubt other problems.

>>toyg+(OP)
How about VLC:

https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/73dafr/vlc_creator_...

>>selest+Q7
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33403233

>>throwa+72
Most F/OSS projects result in commercial exploitation, one way or another. Virtuous exceptions are very very few.

> OAI is not bad for being for profit, it is bad for the bait and switch.

The bait-and-switch examples in F/OSS are legion, typically via license changes and occasionally via non-changes going against the spirit of the community (like Linux sticking to GPLv2). Most are not as blatant as IMDB pulling up the drawbridge, but something like moving to "open core" once popularity is achieved.

>>mellos+J
What is your point? That moderation issues or bias fights in some articles are equivalent to the concept of Wikipedia being proprietary?

>>unethi+uI
No, my point was that the examples given are not free of significant problems - which generally seem to emerge at scale. I'm an admirer of all the projects named (also OpenAI) in principle, despite their flaws.