Meta’s LLaMa 2 license is not Open Source | Hacker News Reader

Meta’s LLaMa 2 license is not Open Source

blog.opensource.org

42 pointsreedciccio8 comments

> Among other requirements, for a license to be Open Source, it may not discriminate against persons or groups or fields of endeavor (OSD points 5 and 6). Meta’s license for the LLaMa models and code does not meet this standard; specifically, it puts restrictions on commercial use for some users (paragraph 2) and also restricts the use of the model and software for certain purposes (the Acceptable Use Policy).

They list AGPL as open source[0]. Couldn't it be argued that AGPL would also fail on these points?

I agree that Llama 2 isn't open source. Just curious if there's a double standard in the assessment.

[0] https://opensource.org/licenses/

What specifically do you think AGPL runs afoul of in the open source definition?

I do see a paradox of saying you're free to do what you want with software and then adding responsibilities as GPL does, but as far as being open source, you are free under AGPL to use it for any purpose, modify in any way, etc, you just have to share what you do under the same license, so I don't see why it wouldn't qualify.

I wonder whether a license is a valid FOSS license, if it requires users to share works they created with it (like a FOSS PhotoShop but any artwork edited with it must be licensed under Creative Commons).

You're right. For some reason I thought AGPL was more similar to SSPL, but found out I was wrong after some reading.

Thanks for clarifying, I hadn't heard of that license before. It's interesting to see it is classified as "extreme copyleft" (on wikipedia) and is apparently so extreme in what it asks you to share that it doesn't qualify as open source, nor is it recognized as free software.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Side_Public_License

Related ongoing thread:

In the LLM space, "open source" is being used to mean "downloadable weights" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36815255 - July 2023 (182 comments)

Some threads discussing the non-open source nature of LLaMa 2:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36817938

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36783019

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36817571

Thanks! Macroexpanded:

Why did Meta open-source Llama 2? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36817938 - July 2023 (42 comments)

Meta can call Llama open source as much as it likes, but that doesn't mean it is - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36817571 - July 2023 (5 comments)

Llama 2 is not open source - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36783019 - July 2023 (16 comments)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com