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I saw this, I still am highly suspicious about the future of these models and later attempts at monetization. Did they really just drop their 10% royalty thing
by version_five 3y ago
I saw this, I still am highly suspicious about the future of these models and later attempts at monetization. Did they really just drop their 10% royalty thing and decide they'll just open source all their models now?
Another comment mentions llama may get an open license, and there are other emerging alternatives. In six months there will be lots of options. I would not spend my time building anything around a model that started in such a sketchy way.
It would be interesting to hear about why they decided to change their license and what their plans are for the future.
I admit Falcon has really pissed my off because they pretended they had an open source model when they really released a sleazy freemium thing.
- convexstrictly 3y agoDo you consider the Unity model "sleazy"? But I agree that it was poor form to call it open-source at the time. Sadly, it seems to be standard practice in the LLM space to release models with all kinds of restrictions on use and call them "open source". Well now Falcon is open source. Given they are giving away something that was very expensive to train, I am grateful.
- version_five 3y agoI don't know unity's model. I call Falcon sleazy because the royalty stuff (plus a bunch of absurd related terms) were buried in the license while the headline said open source. I'm not against commercial products, nor products with free and premium tiers. This otoh felt, like I say, just sleazy.
- jrflowers 3y agoHere is a link to an explanation of the Unity model. https://gamedevbeginner.com/is-unity-free/ https://gamedevbeginner.com/is-unity-free/
- generalizations 3y agoThe explanation is less interesting than the fact they chose not to be upfront in their PR about the limitations of their original license. Personally, I don't care what terms they choose - but I do care if they misrepresent them. Honesty is important, and they weren't. But all that's void now that they've gone Apache.
- brucethemoose2 3y agoWell if its Apache 2.0 now, can't you clone it as-is and have it be open "forever?"
- version_five 3y agoThat's part of why I'm interested in their motivation changing licenses. They obviously had a profit motive and a model that centered on collecting rents on the model and decided to back off from it. Will they keep maintaining their code and improving the models and continue releasing everything under Apache 2.0? I'm just saying I feel like we got a glimpse of what they're about and it wasn't pretty, so why build around them when there are lots of options.
- brucethemoose2 3y agoThey dont need to do squat. Look at Stable Diffusion 1.5 and LLaMA: They are thriving, but the original implementations are ancient history, and Meta/StabilityAI/RunawayML have done precisely nothing. And to be blunt, their legality is very ugly, which already makes Falcon more attractive.
- version_five 3y agoVery good point, if a community builds up around it, that would make it much more attractive. So chicken / egg in a way. I can definitely see that happening.
- brucethemoose2 3y agoYeah. TBH the biggest hurdle is that Falcon is a different architecture, so the existing tooling won't "just work." A drop in LLaMA or RWKV replacement has a better chance of catching on, even if it leaves some architecture improvements on the table.
- convexstrictly 3y agoAgree. The Stable Diffusion Open RAIL M license: "You agree not to use the Model or Derivatives of the Model ... To defame, disparage or otherwise harass others" Does "disparage" have a settled meaning in law? Is a parody disparaging? https://github.com/CompVis/stable-diffusion/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/CompVis/stable-diffusion/blob/main/LICENS...
- rvcdbn 3y agoThis is such a bizarre comment to make about something that is Apache licensed. Who cares what happened before now that it’s truly open?