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.
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?
Everything I do is driven by a single goal: to make my startup successful so I can innovate in edtech. Nothing else.
You may not believe me, and you may think I have ulterior motives, but I don't. My only goal is to build technology that meaningfully advances education.
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.
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
First, I need to make my startup successful so I can continue innovating over the next 15 years. Open-sourcing our work could be a distraction at this stage. Maintaining an open-source project requires significant time and effort.
It would also make it easier for competitors to build products that compete directly with us, such as https://studio.academa.ai. That would make it harder for my startup to succeed.
I'm not building this for the sake of making money. I simply need enough protected space to innovate competitively and give the company the best chance to succeed. If it does, I'll be able to keep building and pushing education forward for years to come.