They're Chinese companies offering open source models now as loss leaders to keep themselves in the game because they know virtually nobody, especially in the corporate world, would contract with them and give them access to their data. They might as well just send a Dropbox link of all their sensitive data directly to their Chinese competitors, same end effect.

They're also doing it as the digital equivalent of what they've done in other industrial sectors for decades. Undercut and flood the market and once you've killed or severely hindered your competition, then you have the market cornered. The moment they can afford to these open source releases will stop.

Then the world will be stuck, just the way the world is largely stuck on rare earths. Instead of being able to regulate the leading companies from DC and Brussels, they'll be stuck watching Beijing call the shots.

That world would likely always have guys like Mistral and Trinity, but it's an open question if they'll ever catch up to the frontier.

And then Beijing will enjoy access to the data (ask any multinational operating in China for more than 2 seconds how useful contracts and Chinas legal system is for protecting IP), and these companies will roll in the money, and the Chinese supply chain will grow up behind the labs.

So, let's not pretend they've got the moral high ground. No. That boot just isn't on your neck yet. They're playing the long game -- and they're good at it.