Been disappointed to see Ollama list models that are supported by the cloud product but not the Ollama app. It's becoming increasingly hard to deny that they're only interested in model inference just to turn a quick buck.
We are in this together! Hoping for more models to come from the labs in varying sizes that will fit on devices.
1. Donationware - Let's be real, tokens are expensive and if they ask for everyone to chip in voluntarily people wouldn't do that and Ollama would go bust quickly.
2. Subscriptions (bootstrapped and no VCs) again like 1. people would have to pay for the cloud service as a subscription to be sustainable (would you?) or go bust.
3. Ads - Ollama could put ads in the free version but to remove them the users can pay for a higher tier, a somewhat good compromise, except developers don't like ads and don't like pay for their tools unless their company does it for them. No users = Ollama goes bust.
4. VCs - This is the current model which is why they have a cloud product and it keeps the main product free (for now). Again, if they cannot make money or sell to another company Ollama goes bust.
5. Fully Open Source (and 100% free) with Linux Foundation funding - Ollama could also go this route, but this means they wouldn't be a business anymore for investors and rely on the Linux Foundation's sponsors (Google, IBM, etc) for funding the LF to stay sustainable. The cloud product may stay for enterprises.
Ollama has already taken money from investors so they need to produce a return for them so 5. isn't an option in the long term.
6. Acquisition by another company - Ollama could get acquired and the product wouldn't change* (until the acquirer jacks up prices or messes with the product) which ultimately kills it anyway as the community moves on.
I don't see any other way that Ollama can not be enshittified without making a quick buck.
You just need to avoid VC backed tools and pay for bootstrapped ones without any ties to investors.
Ollama gives me, essentially, a wrapper for llama.cpp and convenient hosting where I can download models.
I'm happy to pay for the bandwidth, plus a premium to cover their running this service.
I'm furthermore happy to pay a small charge to cover the development that they've done and continue to do to make local-inference easy for me.
Me neither. The mistake they did was getting outside investments, as now they're no longer in full control and eventually are gonna have to at least give the impression they give a shit about the investors, and it'll come at the cost of the users one way or another.
Please pay for your tools that are independently developed, we really need more community funding of projects so we can avoid this never-ending spiral of VC-fueled+killed tools.
But I understand the added zeros to the (maybe) future payout when you take VC funds is hard to ignore, I'm not blaming them for anything really.