The Clothesline Paradox

Back in 1975, Steve Baer argued that hanging laundry outside creates useful solar-powered work that economic measures ignore. He called this the “Clothesline Paradox.” Open source works much the same way, Tim O’Reilly and Mozilla CTO Raffi Krikorian agreed at AI Codecon. While open models may capture little direct revenue, much of their value stays with the organizations and people who use them, exemplified by the success of Linux, Google’s use of open source infrastructure, and Pinterest’s reported $10 million savings from deploying open models. Follow O'Reilly on: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/oreilly/ Facebook: http://facebook.com/OReilly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oreillymedia BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/oreilly.bsky.social TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@oreillymedia