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by loire28021 hours ago |
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upvoteby dcss_gardener21 hours ago|
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I've also heard it used to describe projects that are open source by anyone's measure but have contribution or project governance requirements like for example sqlite.

"Source available" is definitely in much wider use than "weights available" but it's not that common and it's not used consistently at all in my experience.

Weights are different enough from source code I don't find the metaphor useful or compelling. I don't see any value in trying to apply it to a novel subdomain of software engineering, frankly.

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upvoteby mrob20 hours ago|
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>I've also heard it used to describe projects that are open source by anyone's measure but have contribution or project governance requirements like for example sqlite.

Anybody calling SQLite "source available" is mistaken. Are you sure they weren't confusing "source available" with "open core" (Open Source + proprietary add-ons)? SQLite's source code is public domain, which meets the Open Source Definition and is true Open Source. But they also sell proprietary add-ons to fund its development:

https://sqlite.org/prosupport.html

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upvoteby altermetax20 hours ago|
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Honestly, I think "source available" is used pretty consistently, and if someone said "weights available" I would immediately understand what they mean.

No one calls SQLite "source available", and if they do, they're doing it more as a protest of their development model than being serious.

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upvoteby jamiejquinn20 hours ago|
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A license like GPL is very restrictive, but I wouldn't call it source available. Maybe I'm missing your point?
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upvoteby loire28017 hours ago|
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A well known example is Gitlab Enterprise - you can see the source code but (IANAL) you can't use it without paying them and any modifications you make become the property of Gitlab. I remember seeing similar terms around some of the proprietary Confluent Platform components.

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/blob/master/ee/LICENS...

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upvoteby jamiejquinn17 hours ago|
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Wow, that is very restrictive.
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upvoteby loire28016 hours ago|
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It's better than nothing when you are troubleshooting and suspect it's their bug. I hope the rampant illegal AI scraping doesn't force companies to end the practice and go completely closed-source.
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