https://raw.githubusercontent.com/apple/ml-sharp/refs/heads/...
"Exclusively for research purposes" so not actually open source.
"Exclusively for research purposes" so not actually open source.
The only reference seems to be in the acknowledgement, saying that this builds ontop of open source software
[1] https://github.com/apple/ml-sharp/blob/main/LICENSE
[2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/Apple_MIT_License
It effectively prevents the community from using Apple's solution, but gives the Chinese everything they need to duplicate the results and push their own version.
I expect a Hunyuan-branded version of this model in six months. Probably with lots of improvements.
I'm all for Chinese model takeover if this is how US tech giants treat AI. You can't horde the flames forever, US hyperscalers.
The DoD ought to be advocating for a strong domestic open source stance to ensure our ecosystem doesn't get washed away. AI czar David Sacks has this view, but I suppose it's been falling on deaf ears when the hyperscalers crowd out the conversation.
https://github.com/apple/ml-sharp/blob/main/LICENSE
Between this and the model's license, it seems like one is stuck with using this for personal use?
Linux kernel and GCC are probably the only thing left they tolerate, and even then, it is less relevant in the cloud, with containers powered by type 1 hypervisors.
Though I'm sure they will shut their shop asap now that Nvidia basically bought them.
I know, I'm joking: Trump likes Nvidia, but maybe he'll bump the Chinese tax to 30% to approve this deal? In a way I hope he pulls something like that, to punish Huang for his boot shining manipulations.
#iwantRAM
People slowly waking up to how daft and hypecycle misusing a term was all along has been amazing.
Open Source =/= free or software, just readable
so it wasn't a new campaign, it is at best re-appropriating the term open source in the software community in a way communities outside of software have always been using it, in a way that predates software at all, exists in parallel to the software community, and continues to exist now
I have also never once heard anyone use the term FOSS outside of the written form.
So the opposite of what you said, I guess.
You also seem to be saying that the term "open source" existed before software did, so I feel compelled to ask: what do you think "source" stands for in "open source"?
people need to re-evaluate their relationship with open source instead of as a synonym for FOSS, because it clearly doesn't mean that regardless of the colloquialism
and FOSS has an adjective and noun for a reason, its older than the colloquialism
this is just a reversion to the mean
this is a reversion to the mean
New movements like "fair source", which is a form of source available + free use + expiring copyright is the ideal license. It's effectively unlimited use for customers and users, but has a baked in "non-compete" preventing low effort third parties from coming in and eating the market of managed services established by the authors.
We need to kill open source purity. Especially if we want to erode the hyperscalers that aren't even giving away the magic parts or valuable parts of their kingdoms.
Open source purity is a socialist dream while we're still living under the Empire. And it prevents the formation of a salient that can punch through. It's a very low suboptima.
I don't see any reason why you would want fair source authors to go "OSI" open other than taking their revenue stream as your own. The license bakes in contingencies in case the authors go out of business to open the license up for community ownership. That's good enough.
If these businesses were OSI open, the businessss become unsustainable and impossible to scale into something formidable that could chip away at entirely closed hyperscalers.
They just ask you not to compete with them for a few years.
How is that any way comparable to AWS?
Perfect truly is the enemy of good.
In this case, perfect murders good and locks you in the dungeon of eternal bad so you can think endlessly about perfect. It also stabs any good that comes along while crying about perfect.
No Open Source license actually permits this - by definition of Open Source.
Also the notion that copyright "expires" is ludicrous - we only just saw work from the 1920s enter the public domain (and source is no different to that). Laundering via AI clearly does not count, either.
Yes, but the most important reason to pay attention to ANY license for most people is because it is a signal for under what conditions the licensor is likely to sue you (especially in the US, which does not have a general “loser pays” rule for lawsuits), not because of the actual legality, because a lawsuit is a cost most people don’t want to bear while it is ongoing or cover the unrecoverable costs of once it is done, irrespective of winning and losing, and, on the other hand, few people care about being technically legal with their use of copyright protected material if there is no perceived risk of enforcement.
But even if that wasn’t true, and being sued was of no financial or other costs until the case is finally resolved, and only then if you lose, I wouldn't bet much, in the US, in the court system ultimately applying precedent in the most obvious way instead of twisting things in a way which serves the interest of the particular powerful corporate interests involved here.
I know this is a long, nuanced, ongoing discussion. I'm very interested in it, but haven't read up on it for years. Could you elaborate a bit on the latest?
I was always in the camp that opined that "weights" are too broad a term for any sensible discussions about conclusions like "are (not) copyrightable". Clearly a weight that's the average of its training data is not copyrightable. But also, surely, weights that are capable of verbatim reproduction of non-trivial copyrightable training data are, because they're just a strange storage medium for the copyright data.
What am I missing?
Any of the code that wraps the model or makes it useful is subject to copyright. But the weights themselves are as unrestricted as it gets.
Ok, but there's clearly more nuance there. Otherwise I could claim that any mp3 file I wanted to distribute is just a table of 8-bit integers and therefore not subject to copyright.
I don’t know where the catch is, but that sentence can not be true in general.
Weights are numbers that come from an optimization process. To the extent that weights encode any creativity, they encode the creativity of the training data. But any company using AI models (including Apple) does not want that interpretation because they are using AI models that were trained on other people's copyrighted works. If weights could be copyrighted, we all of us would own them.
You either a deliberately misrepresenting the facts or been livoning under a rock. I mean read any discussion about M laptops and you see apple fanboys noncritucally declaring them a revolution in computing.
I see a lot of people extolling the battery life, displays, and trackpads. And probably an equal amount of complaining about the increasingly locked-down and un-customisable nature of macOS. We all like the hardware, and fight the software more by the day.
The blind zealots of the "I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC" era just aren't very common anymore.
> “Research Purposes” means non-commercial scientific research and academic development activities, such as experimentation, analysis, testing conducted by You with the sole intent to advance scientific knowledge and research. “Research Purposes” does not include any commercial exploitation, product development or use in any commercial product or service.
Open source does not require full working implementations. There's no requirement that a code snippet that I release be fully working and identical to a complete solution.
About the access of binaries or providing working implementations, where did those come from? I don't think this thread was discussing those at all.
Indeed I would be willing to call something an "open source model" if it came without weights, but did come with the training data and with a documented process (preferably executable); and a release with just the training data could be called "open dataset" while the software to run the training would be just plain old open source software.
And, of course, a model with only the model data distributed with an open license is relatively commonly called "open weights", this being pretty self-explanatory term.
You already have access to all the training data everyone else is using.... You can download an offline version of Wikipedia. Here's every Reddit comment for a decade: https://academictorrents.com/details/ba051999301b109eab37d16...
Though, I do think it's still acceptable if you just point how to get the data (i.e. if it was the offline version of Wikipedia and then URL to that) if actually providing the source data is overwhelming. Offering to provide a copy at cost would be quite acceptable (i.e. I deliver the media to you to make a copy).
But if there's no way another person can acquire that data, even in theory, then I think it's pretty clear the source was not open. Just use the more appropriate term and everyone is on the level what the release is about.
I'm writing open desktop software that uses WorldLabs splats for consistent location filmmaking, and it's an awesome tool:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=iD999naQq9A
This next year is going to be about controlling a priori what your images and videos will look like before you generate them.
3D splats are going to be incredibly useful for film and graphics design. You can rotate the camera around and get predictable, consistent details.
We need more Gaussian models. I hope the Chinese AI companies start building them.
Everyone will be able to flex their muscles as a creative. Everyone will be able to become an artist (expressing themselves though their unique lens) without putting points into a mechanical skill that is dimensionally orthogonal to idea expression and communication.
This is the "bicycle of the mind" that Steve Jobs talked about 40 some years ago. We've all had keyboards with which to express ourselves and communicate, but soon everyone will be able to visually articulate themselves and their thoughts. It's going to be so uplifting for society.
In fifty years we'll even be able to render our direct thoughts and mold them like clay. Share them directly with one another. Co-think.
I don't think any in this particular space (image-to-3d gaussian representation) are, but then this is the first model I’ve seen in that space at all.
If (which the courts seem to be pretty consistently finding) training models on copyright-protected works generally is fair use, though using models to produce works which would violate copyright if made by other means with reference to the source material is still a copyright violation, then training has no bearing on the legality of copying the models. (Even if it wasn't, then copying and using the models at all would violate the copyright of the original owners of the training material again and be illegal irrespective of the “license” offered by the model trainer.)
Morally? Well, pretty much the same dichotomy applies; if training the model isn't a violation of the source material's creators' rights, then the fact it was trained without permission has no bearing on the morality of using the model without the trainers permission, if it is a violation of the source material's creators' rights, then so is using the model irrespective of the trainer's “license”, as the trainer has no right to permit further use of the material they had no right to create.
The idea that the model is an intrusion on the rights of the creators of the materials used in training and that this makes use of the model more rather than less permissibly, legally or morally, takes some bizarre mental gymnastics.