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From the website: > licensed under the new Mistral AI Non-Production License, which means that you can use it for research and testing purposes. ... Which bas

From the website: > licensed under the new Mistral AI Non-Production License, which means that you can use it for research and testing purposes. ... Which basically means "we give you this model. Go find its weaknesses and report on r/locallama. Then we'll use that to improve our commercial model which we won't open-source." I'm sick of abusing the word "open-source" in this field.

JimDabell 2y ago
> I'm sick of abusing the word "open-source" in this field. They don’t call this open source anywhere, do they? As far as I can see, they only say it’s open weights and that it’s available under their Mistral AI Non-Production License for research and testing. That doesn’t scream “open source” to me.
- demosthanos 2y ago
  They do say "open-weight", which is I think still very misleading in this context. Open-weight sounds like it should be the same as open-source, just for weights instead of the full source (for example, training data and the code used to generate the weights may not be released). This isn't really "open" in any meaningful sense.
  - Zambyte 2y ago
    The fact that I can downloaded it and run it myself is a pretty meaningful amount of openness to me. I can easily ignore their bogus claims about what I'm allowed to do with it due to their distribution model. I can't necessarily do the same with a propriety service, as they can cut me off if the way I use the output makes them sad :(
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      > The fact that I can downloaded it and run it myself is a pretty meaningful amount of openness to me That's typically called freeware, though.
      - Zambyte 2y ago
        The inference engine that I use to run open weight language models is fully free software. The model itself isn't really software in the traditional sense. So calling it ____ware seems inaccurate.
        TeMPOraL 2y ago
        The interpreter is free software. The model is freeware distributed as a binary blob. Code vs. Data is a matter of perspective, but with large neural nets, more than anywhere, it makes no sense to pretend they're plain data. All the computational complexity is in the weights, they're very much code compiled for an unusual architecture (the inference engine).
        Zambyte 2y ago
        Regardless of the distinction of code vs data, putting a limit to the number of inferences you can run on a model is essentially the same as using a copyright license on a PNG to limit the number of times you can "run" the PNG with a photo viewer. Is that enforceable? Does it matter? Does the copyright extend to music that my photo viewer generates when I open the image? IANAL but imo, no.
    - demosthanos 2y ago
      > I can easily ignore their bogus claims about what I'm allowed to do with it due to their distribution model. If you're talking about exclusively personally use, sure. If you're talking about a business setting in a jurisdiction that Mistral can sue in, not so much. Being able to use it in a business setting is a pretty darn important part of what Open Source has always meant (it's why it exists as a term at all).
      - Zambyte 2y ago
        > If you're talking about a business setting in a jurisdiction that Mistral can sue in, not so much. I'm reminded of the Japanese concept called Sosumi :) > Being able to use it in a business setting is a pretty darn important part of what Open Source has always meant (it's why it exists as a term at all). I'm quite familiar with the history of that term, but neither I nor Mistral used it. None of their models have been open source; they have been open weight. You can argue that they are actually "weight available" given the terms they write next to the download link, but since there has been no ruling on whether weights themselves are covered by copyright (and I think that would be terribly bogus if they are), I simply choose not to care what they write in their "terms of use".
  - boulos 2y ago
    This is why I prefer the term "weights available" just like "source available". It makes it clear that you can get your hands on the copy, you could run this exact thing locally if they go out of business, etc. but it is definitely not open in the OSS sense.
- gyudin 2y ago
  All their other models are “open source” and it was the selling point they built their brand on. I doubt they made their new model completely different from previous ones so it’s supposed be open source too, unless they found some juridical loophole lol
- Rastonbury 2y ago
  No but they do say "empowering developers" and "democratising coding" as the subtitle, I guess only those who pay
wrs 2y ago
If you want to live on the legal edge, it’s unclear whether there is any copyright in model weights (since they don’t have human authorship), so just wait for someone to post the weights someplace where you can get them without agreeing to the license.
benreesman 2y ago
I use the term “available weight”. This is maybe a debatable claim, but I’ll contend that without the magnificent rebel who leaked the original LLaMA weights the last, what, 15 months would have gone completely differently. The legislators and courts and lawyers will be years if not decades sorting all this out. For now there seems to be a productive if slightly uneasy truce: outside of a few groups at a few firms, everyone seems to be maximizing for innovation and generally behaving under a positive sum expectation. One imagines if some really cool tune of this model shows up as a magnet or even on huggingface, the courteous thing probably happened: Mistral was notified in advance and some mutually beneficial arrangement was agreed to in outline, maybe inked, maybe not. I don’t work for Mistral, so that’s pure speculation, but the big company I spent most of my career at would have certainly said “can we hire this person? can we buy this company? can we collaborate with people who do awesome stuff with our stuff that we didn’t think of?” The icky actors kind of dominate the headlines and I’m as guilty as anyone and guiltier than most of letting that be top of mind too often. In the large this is really cool and kind of new. I’m personally rather optimistic that we’re well past the point when outright piracy or flagrantly adversarial license violations are either necessary or useful. To me this license seems like an invitation to build on Mistral’s work and approach them with the results, and given how well a posture of openness with some safeguards is working out for FAIR and the LLaMA group, that’s certainly the outcome I’d be hoping for in their position. Maybe open AI was an unrealistic goal. Maybe AvailableAI is what we wind up with, and that wouldn’t be too bad.
- deleted 2y ago
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JimDabell 2y ago

> I'm sick of abusing the word "open-source" in this field. They don’t call this open source anywhere, do they? As far as I can see, they only say it’s open weights and that it’s available under their Mistral AI Non-Production License for research and testing. That doesn’t scream “open source” to me.

demosthanos 2y ago
They do say "open-weight", which is I think still very misleading in this context. Open-weight sounds like it should be the same as open-source, just for weights instead of the full source (for example, training data and the code used to generate the weights may not be released). This isn't really "open" in any meaningful sense.
- Zambyte 2y ago
  The fact that I can downloaded it and run it myself is a pretty meaningful amount of openness to me. I can easily ignore their bogus claims about what I'm allowed to do with it due to their distribution model. I can't necessarily do the same with a propriety service, as they can cut me off if the way I use the output makes them sad :(
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    > The fact that I can downloaded it and run it myself is a pretty meaningful amount of openness to me That's typically called freeware, though.
    - Zambyte 2y ago
      The inference engine that I use to run open weight language models is fully free software. The model itself isn't really software in the traditional sense. So calling it ____ware seems inaccurate.
      - TeMPOraL 2y ago
        The interpreter is free software. The model is freeware distributed as a binary blob. Code vs. Data is a matter of perspective, but with large neural nets, more than anywhere, it makes no sense to pretend they're plain data. All the computational complexity is in the weights, they're very much code compiled for an unusual architecture (the inference engine).
        Zambyte 2y ago
        Regardless of the distinction of code vs data, putting a limit to the number of inferences you can run on a model is essentially the same as using a copyright license on a PNG to limit the number of times you can "run" the PNG with a photo viewer. Is that enforceable? Does it matter? Does the copyright extend to music that my photo viewer generates when I open the image? IANAL but imo, no.
  - demosthanos 2y ago
    > I can easily ignore their bogus claims about what I'm allowed to do with it due to their distribution model. If you're talking about exclusively personally use, sure. If you're talking about a business setting in a jurisdiction that Mistral can sue in, not so much. Being able to use it in a business setting is a pretty darn important part of what Open Source has always meant (it's why it exists as a term at all).
    - Zambyte 2y ago
      > If you're talking about a business setting in a jurisdiction that Mistral can sue in, not so much. I'm reminded of the Japanese concept called Sosumi :) > Being able to use it in a business setting is a pretty darn important part of what Open Source has always meant (it's why it exists as a term at all). I'm quite familiar with the history of that term, but neither I nor Mistral used it. None of their models have been open source; they have been open weight. You can argue that they are actually "weight available" given the terms they write next to the download link, but since there has been no ruling on whether weights themselves are covered by copyright (and I think that would be terribly bogus if they are), I simply choose not to care what they write in their "terms of use".
- boulos 2y ago
  This is why I prefer the term "weights available" just like "source available". It makes it clear that you can get your hands on the copy, you could run this exact thing locally if they go out of business, etc. but it is definitely not open in the OSS sense.
gyudin 2y ago
All their other models are “open source” and it was the selling point they built their brand on. I doubt they made their new model completely different from previous ones so it’s supposed be open source too, unless they found some juridical loophole lol
Rastonbury 2y ago
No but they do say "empowering developers" and "democratising coding" as the subtitle, I guess only those who pay

wrs 2y ago

If you want to live on the legal edge, it’s unclear whether there is any copyright in model weights (since they don’t have human authorship), so just wait for someone to post the weights someplace where you can get them without agreeing to the license.

benreesman 2y ago

I use the term “available weight”. This is maybe a debatable claim, but I’ll contend that without the magnificent rebel who leaked the original LLaMA weights the last, what, 15 months would have gone completely differently. The legislators and courts and lawyers will be years if not decades sorting all this out. For now there seems to be a productive if slightly uneasy truce: outside of a few groups at a few firms, everyone seems to be maximizing for innovation and generally behaving under a positive sum expectation. One imagines if some really cool tune of this model shows up as a magnet or even on huggingface, the courteous thing probably happened: Mistral was notified in advance and some mutually beneficial arrangement was agreed to in outline, maybe inked, maybe not. I don’t work for Mistral, so that’s pure speculation, but the big company I spent most of my career at would have certainly said “can we hire this person? can we buy this company? can we collaborate with people who do awesome stuff with our stuff that we didn’t think of?” The icky actors kind of dominate the headlines and I’m as guilty as anyone and guiltier than most of letting that be top of mind too often. In the large this is really cool and kind of new. I’m personally rather optimistic that we’re well past the point when outright piracy or flagrantly adversarial license violations are either necessary or useful. To me this license seems like an invitation to build on Mistral’s work and approach them with the results, and given how well a posture of openness with some safeguards is working out for FAIR and the LLaMA group, that’s certainly the outcome I’d be hoping for in their position. Maybe open AI was an unrealistic goal. Maybe AvailableAI is what we wind up with, and that wouldn’t be too bad.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]