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by supernebula 10 days ago
What tool was used for video generation?
1 comments

We have an in-house computer graphics pipeline. We reimplemented 3Blue1Brown's Manim in Rust from scratch. It is available at https://studio.academa.ai. The renderer runs in the browser using WebGPU.
is that renderer open source?
No, not yet. It's something we may do in the future.
LLM-written clones of free software into proprietary seem to be a growing trend now.

With manim, it's probably legal (I think MIT license?), but in general, it makes the world a worse place.

It's the AI frontier ethos. "I get mine." That's the culture now.

Speaking of which, it happened before, too, in the 1970's with personal computer software.

All we want to do is innovate. We simply can't open source this because we're rewriting and rebuilding it every day.
Is cloning Manim "innovation" now?

Plenty of open source is updated every day.

You had no problem taking advantage of Manim to profit, but when it comes to returning the great favor done to you by Manim being open source, you don't care?

Okay.

Why can’t you do that in the open? Normally I don’t think people have a moral obligation to open source, but if you’re using AI to reimplement an existing open source library I think you do.
> All we want to do is innovate.

That's very clear. That's why we have spyware, ad tech, WWII-era German chemical weapons, the East India Company, Oracle's business model, fintech, ...

Ask anyone 40 years older. Regrets focus on time with family and meaningful work. Few people think: "Did I innovate enough?"

> We simply can't open source this because we're rewriting and rebuilding it every day.

I don't quite see the logical connection in this sentence.

Everything I've worked on in the past 15 years is open-source. I suspect you'd:

- Be able to find modest amounts of funding to do this in the open space (e.g. within the academy, as a teaching professor, adjunct, or similar) -- enough to sustain yourself, but without a promise of riches

- Be able to "innovate," make more E($), and do less harm in corporate America