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points

by isityettime4 hours ago |

comments

by SahAssar4 hours ago|

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> Open-weights means weights are released under an open-source license.

According to who? From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_weights:

> Publishing these values allows others to download and use the model, while permission to modify, fine-tune or redistribute it depends on its license.

Those restrictions are definitely not compatible with the definition of open-source/FOSS. I think you have a much stricter view of what open-weights means than the industry.

by isityettime3 hours ago|

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"Open weights" is a correction that arose out of calling models whose weights were released under open-source licenses "open-source" before the OSI sold out. These companies trying to dilute the polite correction just like they tried to dilute "open-source" only reinforces my point.

There was an attempt to create an analogue of the OSI's Open-Source Definition that acknowledged the problems of merely releasing weights as "open-source". That project seems to have largely failed or fizzled, and "open weight" has come to be used mostly as a way of acknowledging that only the weights have been released under open-source terms.

This model of Meta's fails even that dramatically weakened standard.

This is just a series of dilutions by which giant corporations are trying (and apparently succeeding here on "hacker" news) to trade on the cachet of commitments they don't actually hold.

by SahAssar3 hours ago|

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I mostly agree, but again, You said "Open-weights means weights are released under an open-source license" and I asked "According to who?"

"Open weights" is for the most part a term that is meaningless besides being technically able to run it on your own hardware.

I don't think we have a proper term for what you are reaching for, and proper open-source models (training, training-data, etc. being fully open) are scarce.

by isityettime2 hours ago|

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If I have any argument, what I'm in favor of is situating our use of terms like this in the context and history of the free software movement, even absent some "defining authority" like the OSI and the FSF. I'm open to other definitions and to observations that unfortunately "open weight" is a term that was co-opted almost as soon as it was coined. But it's not about semantics for me, it's about promoting an understanding of these terms and ideas that is continuous with the free software movement that birthed them. It's not about dictionaries for me. Saying "this doesn't fit the category" in situations like this isn't lexicography so much as it is politics (or less grandiosely, a critical analysis of marketing materials).

> I don't think we have a proper term for what you are reaching for, and proper open-source models (training, training-data, etc. being fully open) are scarce.

I think you're very much right that we don't have a "brand" with either the same kind of institutional backing as terms like "open-source" and "free software" or a wealth of examples to point to.