Whenever I watch fastai course or use the library, I always wonder, how does Jeremy and team manage to keep everything FREE and manage finances …!
As Lex said on his podcast, how does Jeremy manage to be this “saint”!!
I am extremely curious and to be honest feel ashamed to just use this material and not being able to contribute… I want to really know how can a group manage to share so much and bring together such a set of nice people who are also contributing so much without asking anything in return!
I can’t answer about the “why”, but the how is that Jeremy founded a number of businesses that were successful and sold them for $$$.
That’s not a prerequisite for building great courses and giving them away for free, of course (people who aren’t rich also do stuff like this), but I’m sure that not having to worry about the money helps.
Plus it will probably turn into new business opportunities somehow (e.g. licensing special versions of the fastai library to big clients, setting up a new company that uses fastai to solve an interesting problem, and so on). So you can also see this not just as an act of philantrophy but as an investment into potential new ventures.
to be honest feel ashamed to just use this material and not being able to contribute
I’m sure the people who put this course and library together do not want you to feel ashamed about using their materials!
Hi Mayankpj
I know nothing about Deep Learning and it is a million miles from my day job so if I can learn freely from fastai about python swift google … then it is only fair if I can I make a micro contribution to the forum.
Regards Conwyn
I understand that there are perhaps some plausible gains to be made which I believe would be so much more easier if Jeremy went at it alone.
I am grateful that he and rachel decided to help and create a community rather than just being in the business…
And yes, that micro contribution is what should be made perhaps…
It’s indeed a terrific resource. It could, in my opinion, benefit from an improved UI/UX (though nothing worthwhile is easy). Thank you to all involved - Jeremy, Rachel, FastAI team, and all the community!
I don’t know why I reply here.
I personally feel very thankful to fastai, other people, Jeremy, and Rachel to teach deep learning for free and in a high-quality matter to other people. Most importantly, it is not in the introduction level, and it teaches people to solve real and complicated problems. I have learned a lot, even though I am a stupid person.
In the meantime, I think machinethinkMatthijs is right. There is no one in the world who does this kind of free stuff to people. I do not want to commit how we should feel about contributing, but I still want to say thanks to people working for Fastai for other people.
