[jerrygenser]

Based on the podcast with Lex Friedman and Mark Zuckerberg, see ~minute 30.

My hypothesis based on the context of Mark discussing the release is that it's going to be completely open source and can licensed to be used commercially. Not that Meta is going to add a whole new revenue side of business to compete with OpenAI. i.e. "Here is model, with commercially permissive licensing" not "Here is model that you can use commercially but must pay me"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff4fRgnuFgQ&ab_channel=LexFr...

[hospitalJail]

Another hypothesis is that they are trying to rehab their brand.

They can even write it as 'good will' on their financial statements.

It kind of is working.

[justapassenger]

Meta has been one of the major open source contributors for about a decade now. They open source/contribute to a lot of tech, as their business isn’t about tech, but products.

[smoldesu]

This isn't some recent revelation or anything. Facebook's AI team (FAIR) open sourced their major technology in 2017 with Pytorch. In 2018 they published Pytext in an age when most people didn't know what a Large Language Model even meant. Seeing LLaMA get made should not be a surprise to anyone who is familiar with the history of AI research. It's like hearing people call CUDA an "unfair advantage" while ignoring billions of Nvidia R&D dollars getting spent in the AI sector over the course of a decade.

It might feel like "brand rehab" or "good will" as a consumer, but a lot of this work was put in motion a while ago.