Llama 2 is not open source | Hacker News Reader

Llama 2 is not open source

ai.meta.com

32 pointsnailer17 comments

Update: the OSI has also clarified that Llama 2 is not open source:

https://twitter.com/opensourceorg/status/1681363091009986560

Original:

See

> 2. Additional Commercial Terms. If, on the Llama 2 version release date, the monthly active users of the products or services made available by or for Licensee, or Licensee’s affiliates, is greater than 700 million monthly active users in the preceding calendar month, you must request a license from Meta, which Meta may grant to you in its sole discretion, and you are not authorized to exercise any of the rights under this Agreement unless or until Meta otherwise expressly grants you such rights.

Which violates the open source definition.

Quite frankly whilst I have no love for Meta, if they are willing to spend stupendous amounts of money to open source their AI models, yet prevent use of this by companies who reach 700 million MAUs from benefiting from this investment, then they’re doing a service to the community and ultimately finding a way to commercialise their investment. Tldr; they’ve invested a lot of money and time to help the community benefit from AI. If you then go onto build a billion dollar business servicing near one a billion users, then they expect a thank you in currency. How is that not reasonable?

It may very well be reasonable, but it's not "open source".

Easy to assume to the worst considering the company, and those assumptions are probably correct.

Of course it's not. It's baffling that such a description ever appeared in the public discourse.

dang this is flagged unnecessarily. Can you please investigate?

So it's open source for all intends and purposes.

Not sure why some people get off of this hair-splitting.

Open source is a real term with a precise definition and no, not all intents and purposes required by the open source definition are allowed by the license.

Alright then do tell me:

How exactly is it any different from "real Open Source" to you personally and 99% of developers ?

In the sense that if I worked for a big company, I have reasons to not look into Llama as a using it for work would have obstacles.

The licensing terms say you're not allowed to use this to improve your own LLM, and that you need to get a license from Facebook if you get more than 700 million users. While that's a big number, those are still restrictions on how I can use the software.

The OSI, which stands for Open Source Initiative, is a public charity organization dedicated to Open Source, https://opensource.org/, has explicitly stated (on Twitter) that this license is not Open Source because of those restrictions.

https://twitter.com/opensourceorg/status/1681363091009986560

That doesn’t matter and isn’t the point. This doesn’t match the definition of open source. That’s a fact.

Sure! An actual open source app would let me use it to contribute to another model.

There's no "real open source", only open source (meets the open source definition) and not open source. The open source definition is here: https://opensource.org/osd/

Well I'm sorry but I don't recall ever subscribing to the (blatantly arbitrary) "official" open source definition (even though I can appreciate the initiative).

I prefer the literal definition: The source is open.

Which it is.

The open source definition is by the people that invented the term 'open source'. When you heard the term 'open source', it was because the OSI made the term 'open source' and defined it.

You can use any other term you like: 'shared source', 'source available', 'fauxpen source' or whatever else.

Reading this thread, it sounds like this is an "open source" vs "Open Source(tm)" discussion, much like "agile" and "Agile" was.

No the term was invented by the people that wrote the definition.

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