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by andy99 171 days ago
Meta’s campaign to corrupt the meaning of Open Source was unfortunately very successful and now most people associate releasing the weights with open source.
6 comments

Actually it is more like all big corps campaigns that have successfully moved away from anything GPL as much as possible, while pushing for business friendly licenses.

Linux kernel and GCC are probably the only thing left they tolerate, and even then, it is less relevant in the cloud, with containers powered by type 1 hypervisors.

Releasing weights is fine but you also need to be allowed to... Use the model :P
You’re perfectly free to use it for private use, model output have been deemed public domain
Or you're free to use the output for commercial use if you can get someone else to use the tool to make the (uncopyrighted) output you want.
Isn't that what groq did basically?

Though I'm sure they will shut their shop asap now that Nvidia basically bought them.

Nvidia didn’t buy Groq.
They did (unless you're one of the drafters of the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, in which case, weirdly, they didn't)
"basically"
It's deliciously ironic how a campaign to dilute the meaning of free software ended up getting diluted itself.
It's gratifying. I used to tilt at windmills on HN about this and people would be telling me with absolute condescension how the ship had sailed regarding the definition of Open Source, relegating my own life's work to anachronism.

People slowly waking up to how daft and hypecycle misusing a term was all along has been amazing.

We must all choose which hill to die on, and I am glad to have met someone else on that same hill, comrade.

https://www.downloadableisnotopensource.org/

And the training data. A truly open source model also includes the training data.
Thank you! Shame all these big corps that do this forever. Meta #1, Apple # 2, psuedo fake journalists # 3
FOSS = free and open-source software

Open Source =/= free or software, just readable

so it wasn't a new campaign, it is at best re-appropriating the term open source in the software community in a way communities outside of software have always been using it, in a way that predates software at all, exists in parallel to the software community, and continues to exist now

In 30 years in tech, I have never once heard anyone use the term "Open Source" to refer to anything other than FOSS.

I have also never once heard anyone use the term FOSS outside of the written form.

So the opposite of what you said, I guess.

You also seem to be saying that the term "open source" existed before software did, so I feel compelled to ask: what do you think "source" stands for in "open source"?

"Source" can mean any source of information. The term "open source intelligence", referring to public records, goes back to the 60s.
In IT contexts it's used for source code in 99% of situations. Most people have nothing to do with the military or espionage.
it's about to be 98% and I'm fine with that

people need to re-evaluate their relationship with open source instead of as a synonym for FOSS, because it clearly doesn't mean that regardless of the colloquialism

and FOSS has an adjective and noun for a reason, its older than the colloquialism

this is just a reversion to the mean

that's alright, FOSS is 40 years old and has an adjective and noun in front and behind "open source" for a reason

this is a reversion to the mean

The OSI definition and "open source purity" is designed by big tech to erode any value layer open source companies could use to threaten them.

New movements like "fair source", which is a form of source available + free use + expiring copyright is the ideal license. It's effectively unlimited use for customers and users, but has a baked in "non-compete" preventing low effort third parties from coming in and eating the market of managed services established by the authors.

We need to kill open source purity. Especially if we want to erode the hyperscalers that aren't even giving away the magic parts or valuable parts of their kingdoms.

Open source purity is a socialist dream while we're still living under the Empire. And it prevents the formation of a salient that can punch through. It's a very low suboptima.

I don't see any reason why you would want fair source authors to go "OSI" open other than taking their revenue stream as your own. The license bakes in contingencies in case the authors go out of business to open the license up for community ownership. That's good enough.

If these businesses were OSI open, the businessss become unsustainable and impossible to scale into something formidable that could chip away at entirely closed hyperscalers.

Replacing hyperscalers with other hyperscalers born off the back of open source contributors is not exactly progress.
How is it not progress? You have full access to the code, you can use it yourself however you'd like, and the copyrights expire.

They just ask you not to compete with them for a few years.

How is that any way comparable to AWS?

Perfect truly is the enemy of good.

In this case, perfect murders good and locks you in the dungeon of eternal bad so you can think endlessly about perfect. It also stabs any good that comes along while crying about perfect.

> They just ask you not to compete with them for a few years.

No Open Source license actually permits this - by definition of Open Source.

Also the notion that copyright "expires" is ludicrous - we only just saw work from the 1920s enter the public domain (and source is no different to that). Laundering via AI clearly does not count, either.