[ronsor]

Local-first doesn't exclude cloud hosting; it just means you can run it locally.

With open models, you have multiple providers competing on inference speed, quality, and price, leading to healthier market without lock-in.

[nomel]

local first usually means extreme compromise so it can, practically, be run locally, because the cost of owning high end hardware is prohibitive. there are also companies providing locally deployed closed source models, that meet certain security requirements.

"open weights" is the appropriate term.