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Comment by exizt88 | Hacker News Reader

> The code in this repository is open-source under the Apache-2.0 license. The InternLM weights are fully open for academic research and also allow commercial use with written permission from the official team. For inquiries about commercial licenses and collaborations, please contact internlm@pjlab.org.cn.

This makes me much less excited about this model.

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Agreed, this basically moves it to the "don't bother" pile. There are already the llama variants with non-commercial licenses, and open-llama as an open source model (I'm thinking in the 7B space specifically). This would have to be pretty friggin compelling to spend any time on.

Do they even have the legal justification of saying how you can or cannot use the weights? It could be ruled that weights are uncopyrightable. I think we as a community should advocate for that.

If you train on data you don't own, the results (weights, unmodified outputs) should be public domain. When people create novel works on top (SaaS tools, music, films), then those human combinations should hold copyright. Not the model weights.

If you can prove you own all of the inputs into training, then perhaps it's another story. But that could also be dangerous and allow for data cartels to own the future.

Is that even valid? This seems to be the only place where they’ve made this exemption, it’s not written in the license. Even the weights on hugging face are licensed under apache 2.0.

Doesn’t apache 2.0 allow for fairly unrestricted commercial use? Isn’t that the whole point of using that license?

The model code is Apache 2.0, the weights are proprietary.

That's not their huggingface repo says: https://huggingface.co/internlm/internlm-7b

The current release on huggingface is available under plain apache 2.0

If weights are even protected by copyright at all...which would be a departure from current law.

Less excited that you can't freely take work from academics to resell it in a shitty SaaS company ?

In Europe we call that a success story.

You do understand that academics are usually funded by taxpayers? Obviously, not by me, as I don't pay taxes in China, but it's not like academics are doing this work for free. Society pays them for their work so that it can benefit from its results.

"Society"

quiet chuckle

Is there any breakdown of private vs government funding for general purpose academic research. I was under the impression that most of the funds in field like ML come from fees from undergrads and donations by alumnus, or by private companies.

> I was under the impression that most of the funds in field like ML come from fees from undergrads and donations by alumnus, or by private companies.

In the United States, tuition makes up less than 35% of most universities' revenue.[0] Donations are significant, but if we were to just look at research funding, it would mostly be government grants.

"The federal government is by far the largest funder of academic R&D..." [1]

[0] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cud [1] https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20202/academic-r-d-in-the-unit...

Don't worry, the private money will not go to their pocket but to fund future projects of the university, lab or whatever. It's a way to lessen the burden on taxpayers, and to shift it to those who benefit the most from it.

You do understand that private companies, as a whole, are a drain on the academic system, pushing to lower the very taxes that fund this research ? Society should benefit from these results. The 5000th LLM-haiku-generator-saas-company-incorporated-in-delaware is not society.

Less excited that I can't freely take work from someone, create a startup that is going to resell it in a shitty SaaS company and cash out for a half B. Yes, yes I am.

So you don't use open source software? You should try it, there's a great ecosystem of free software, including lots written by academics who are happy to have their work add value to industry

I do. And I also don't use open-source software with a commercial license for my job, because I respect the wishes of the author. It doesn't make the projects, tools and libraries any less good. OP is just looking to quickly cash in to something he didn't put an ounce of effort in.

AGPL & Dual-licensing are the way forward, because of leeches.

The entitlement and audacity of people who consume open source blows me away. I've maintained a project for 12 years and recently someone wanted me to help them implement the software in their system. I politely told them that since this wasn't a bug, they would need to purchase a support package. They then accused me of trying to "sell open source software" and closed the issue. People are unbelievable. Fuck me for trying to make a living providing you personal development time, using my software that I've supported for free for over a decade.

I neither agree nor disagree with your position (still thinking about it), but I do think that's right uncharitable mind-reading you've done of GP. They never said anything about "looking to quickly cash in to something he didn't put an ounce of effort in."

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