Can LLaMA be used for commerical purposes though (might limit external contributors)? I believe, FOSS alternatives like DataBricks Dolly / Together RedPajama / Eluether GPT NeoX (et al) is where the most progress is likely to be at.
It’s pretty good as models of that size go, although it doesn’t take a lot of playing around with it to find that there’s still a good distance between it and ChatGPT 3.5.
(I do recommend editing the instructions before playing with it though; telling a model this size that it “always tells the truth” just seems to make it overconfident and stubborn)