The future of open source will be messy

It’s no surprise that the open source group is what OSI says (note: historically I’ve been in this camp) criticize Meta For calling its Llama Large Language Model (LLM) open sourcedespite restrictions that do not comply with OSI requirements. Definition of open source. The industry’s response was a collective shrug. See, for example: “Why Meta LLaMA models are open source” is a name that should drive OSI people crazy. This is partly due to the fact that HackerNews commentator saysthe idea that “Meta, through Llama models, has done more for open source LLM than anyone else.” Going back even further, open source advocates can look to Apache Cassandra, React, GraphQL, PyTorch, and other meta-projects that meet OSI requirements for open source.

It’s hard to get too angry at a company that has created some of the industry’s most important open source projects.

And yet some people are very unhappy, despite the fact that there was (and is not) a clear definition of open source in AI. Yes, OSI is finally here released defining open source code for AI, Open Source Artificial Intelligence Definition 1.0but as with the cloud, OSI is catching up, and its definition has disappointed some of its most ardent supporters because it does not require training data to also be open source.