4 ms·

Probably will get flagged, but I get so annoyed by the cynical takes on Meta and their open source strategy. Meta is the only company releasing true open source

Probably will get flagged, but I get so annoyed by the cynical takes on Meta and their open source strategy. Meta is the only company releasing true open source (React, pytorch, graphql) and now LLama. This company has done more for software development than any other in the last decade. And now they are burning down the competition in AI, making it accessible to all. Meta software engineering compensation strategy pushed up the high end of developer compensation by almost twice. Enough with the weird cynicism on their licensing policy.

wilsonnb3 2y ago
> Meta is the only company releasing true open source What? There are so many open source projects from huge companies these days. VSCode, .NET, typescript from MS Angular, flutter, kubernetes, go, android, chromium from Google
SushiHippie 2y ago
The llama models use a non open source license [0]. Yes it is still better than not being able to access the weights at all, but calling these weights open source is not correct. [0] https://huggingface.co/meta-llama/Meta-Llama-3.1-8B/blob/main/LICENSE https://huggingface.co/meta-llama/Meta-Llama-3.1-8B/blob/mai...
- codingwagie 2y ago
  Dude they spent billions on the model and then just open sourced it
  - martindevans 2y ago
    No, they spent billions on a model and released the weights, and that's fantastic! It's not not open source though.
  - lrrna 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - koolala 2y ago
    Look at Apple spending a billion on ads to say they respect your privacy or the Earth. Meta is buying / licensing a market sector in an industry they dominate where they have full control of our data. Our data is what got them that billion dollars.
cmur 2y ago
if something requires an EULA it isn’t open at all, it is just publicly available. By your logic, public services are “open source.” There are myriad corporations that release actual open source software that is truly free to use. If you experience massive success with anything regarding Meta’s LLMs, they’re going to take a cut according to their EULA.
- bunderbunder 2y ago
  I'm trying to figure out the logic that makes "free for commercial use with less than 700 million monthly active users" less open than "free for non-commercial use", which is the traditional norm for non-copyleft open source machine learning products. But I just can't get there. Could somebody spell it out for me?
  - koolala 2y ago
    Ideals vs. Gut Instinct
- eduction 2y ago
  You’re certainly entitled to the opinion that an agreement (as in EULA) is distinct from a license (as in GPL, MIT etc). But many legal minds close to this issue have moved to the position that there is no meaningful distinction, at least when it comes to licenses like GPL. For example: https://writing.kemitchell.com/2023/10/13/Wrong-About-GPLs https://writing.kemitchell.com/2023/10/13/Wrong-About-GPLs
bschmidt1 2y ago
React? Surely I'm not the only one who remembers https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15050841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15050841 I don't think Facebook/Meta is the beacon of open-source goodness you think it is. The main reason they created yarn instead of iterating on npm is to use their own patent-friendly license they wanted to use with React (before the community flipped out and demanded they re-license it as MIT). Early Vue adoption seemed mostly driven by that React licensing fiasco.
- codingwagie 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - bschmidt1 2y ago
    Get real? How about get the point? It would not have (could not have) been so widely adopted without being MIT licensed and open source. It was huge news when Facebook attempted to change their licensing, and they issued an apology then made it MIT when the community responded. https://meitar.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/facebook_react_is_now_licensed_under_the_mit_license.pdf https://meitar.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/facebook_react...
gwern 2y ago
There is nothing weirdly cynical about it. This is a fact of life in Silicon Valley - that a lot of FLOSS is released for strategic reasons (such as building up a community before enclosing it to extract a profit), and not because the Grinch's heart grew 2 sizes one day. "Commoditize your complement": https://gwern.net/complement https://gwern.net/complement You can benefit a lot from it, and I have... but do be sure you know what you are ferrying on your back before you decide to offer it a ride across the river.
- xgb84j 2y ago
  How do you think Meta profits off React and PyTorch? Just marketing to get good candidates?
  - Der_Einzige 2y ago
    The same way that the US benefits from being the reserve currency of the world. Control of the ecosystem allows meta to define the rules of the game. Also it's bad when HN is downvoting fking GWERN
  - gwern 2y ago
    No. I think they use that web & ML software to help run their $1.3 trillion marketcap online social network company, on which, I am given to understand from US Congressional hearings, they sell ads.
- talldayo 2y ago
  > a lot of FLOSS is released for strategic reasons (such as building up a community before enclosing it Not only is "a lot" of FOSS not released like this, both free software and Meta's models cannot be monetized post-release. If Meta decides to charge money for Llama4, then everyone with access to the prior models can keep their access and even finetune/redistribute their model. There is no strategic flip Meta can attempt here without shotgunning their own foot off.
  - gwern 2y ago
    It absolutely is released like that. Please note that 'such as' does not mean 'all', 'a majority', or anything like that. It simply means 'one example'. (I eat many things 'such as' honey, yet that doesn't make me Winnie the Pooh.) And enclosures come up regularly here on HN where suddenly a company has embarked on a new incredible journey involving 'not releasing all the source code anymore under an OSI-approved license', so they are not even that exotic an outcome.
koolala 2y ago
True? The cynicism is arguments over "true". If you trick yourself into believing this is what Open Source looks like (no source data) then you lose out on imagining what a real open source AI with open source data would be like.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > you lose out on imagining what a real open source AI with open source data would be like Zero privacy?
  - koolala 2y ago
    Sounds like God. What is private? What is public? There is a line between an omnipresent God that sees everything (zero privacy) and an Open Source AI that collects and indexes all public information. I want an AI to be programmed / trained on our conversation here. (if your reading this God / FB / OpenAI / 2025 ai Source Dataset <3)
- YetAnotherNick 2y ago
  Open source and open source model is not a term that came from dictionary, and it is just based on what community thinks it means. As long as open source model doesn't cause confusion, which it does not as open source model today just means open weights model, fighting over it is not worth it.
  - koolala 2y ago
    If open source model means open weight model then open source model means nothing. I want it to mean something!
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - YetAnotherNick 2y ago
      > If open source model means open weight model then open source model means nothing. They are synonym and mean the same thing.

wilsonnb3 2y ago

> Meta is the only company releasing true open source What? There are so many open source projects from huge companies these days. VSCode, .NET, typescript from MS Angular, flutter, kubernetes, go, android, chromium from Google

SushiHippie 2y ago

The llama models use a non open source license [0]. Yes it is still better than not being able to access the weights at all, but calling these weights open source is not correct. [0] https://huggingface.co/meta-llama/Meta-Llama-3.1-8B/blob/main/LICENSE https://huggingface.co/meta-llama/Meta-Llama-3.1-8B/blob/mai...

codingwagie 2y ago
Dude they spent billions on the model and then just open sourced it
- martindevans 2y ago
  No, they spent billions on a model and released the weights, and that's fantastic! It's not not open source though.
- lrrna 2y ago
  [flagged]
- koolala 2y ago
  Look at Apple spending a billion on ads to say they respect your privacy or the Earth. Meta is buying / licensing a market sector in an industry they dominate where they have full control of our data. Our data is what got them that billion dollars.

cmur 2y ago

if something requires an EULA it isn’t open at all, it is just publicly available. By your logic, public services are “open source.” There are myriad corporations that release actual open source software that is truly free to use. If you experience massive success with anything regarding Meta’s LLMs, they’re going to take a cut according to their EULA.

bunderbunder 2y ago
I'm trying to figure out the logic that makes "free for commercial use with less than 700 million monthly active users" less open than "free for non-commercial use", which is the traditional norm for non-copyleft open source machine learning products. But I just can't get there. Could somebody spell it out for me?
- koolala 2y ago
  Ideals vs. Gut Instinct
eduction 2y ago
You’re certainly entitled to the opinion that an agreement (as in EULA) is distinct from a license (as in GPL, MIT etc). But many legal minds close to this issue have moved to the position that there is no meaningful distinction, at least when it comes to licenses like GPL. For example: https://writing.kemitchell.com/2023/10/13/Wrong-About-GPLs https://writing.kemitchell.com/2023/10/13/Wrong-About-GPLs

bschmidt1 2y ago

React? Surely I'm not the only one who remembers https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15050841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15050841 I don't think Facebook/Meta is the beacon of open-source goodness you think it is. The main reason they created yarn instead of iterating on npm is to use their own patent-friendly license they wanted to use with React (before the community flipped out and demanded they re-license it as MIT). Early Vue adoption seemed mostly driven by that React licensing fiasco.

codingwagie 2y ago
[flagged]
- bschmidt1 2y ago
  Get real? How about get the point? It would not have (could not have) been so widely adopted without being MIT licensed and open source. It was huge news when Facebook attempted to change their licensing, and they issued an apology then made it MIT when the community responded. https://meitar.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/facebook_react_is_now_licensed_under_the_mit_license.pdf https://meitar.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/facebook_react...

gwern 2y ago

There is nothing weirdly cynical about it. This is a fact of life in Silicon Valley - that a lot of FLOSS is released for strategic reasons (such as building up a community before enclosing it to extract a profit), and not because the Grinch's heart grew 2 sizes one day. "Commoditize your complement": https://gwern.net/complement https://gwern.net/complement You can benefit a lot from it, and I have... but do be sure you know what you are ferrying on your back before you decide to offer it a ride across the river.

xgb84j 2y ago
How do you think Meta profits off React and PyTorch? Just marketing to get good candidates?
- Der_Einzige 2y ago
  The same way that the US benefits from being the reserve currency of the world. Control of the ecosystem allows meta to define the rules of the game. Also it's bad when HN is downvoting fking GWERN
- gwern 2y ago
  No. I think they use that web & ML software to help run their $1.3 trillion marketcap online social network company, on which, I am given to understand from US Congressional hearings, they sell ads.
talldayo 2y ago
> a lot of FLOSS is released for strategic reasons (such as building up a community before enclosing it Not only is "a lot" of FOSS not released like this, both free software and Meta's models cannot be monetized post-release. If Meta decides to charge money for Llama4, then everyone with access to the prior models can keep their access and even finetune/redistribute their model. There is no strategic flip Meta can attempt here without shotgunning their own foot off.
- gwern 2y ago
  It absolutely is released like that. Please note that 'such as' does not mean 'all', 'a majority', or anything like that. It simply means 'one example'. (I eat many things 'such as' honey, yet that doesn't make me Winnie the Pooh.) And enclosures come up regularly here on HN where suddenly a company has embarked on a new incredible journey involving 'not releasing all the source code anymore under an OSI-approved license', so they are not even that exotic an outcome.

koolala 2y ago

True? The cynicism is arguments over "true". If you trick yourself into believing this is what Open Source looks like (no source data) then you lose out on imagining what a real open source AI with open source data would be like.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> you lose out on imagining what a real open source AI with open source data would be like Zero privacy?
- koolala 2y ago
  Sounds like God. What is private? What is public? There is a line between an omnipresent God that sees everything (zero privacy) and an Open Source AI that collects and indexes all public information. I want an AI to be programmed / trained on our conversation here. (if your reading this God / FB / OpenAI / 2025 ai Source Dataset <3)
YetAnotherNick 2y ago
Open source and open source model is not a term that came from dictionary, and it is just based on what community thinks it means. As long as open source model doesn't cause confusion, which it does not as open source model today just means open weights model, fighting over it is not worth it.
- koolala 2y ago
  If open source model means open weight model then open source model means nothing. I want it to mean something!
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - YetAnotherNick 2y ago
    > If open source model means open weight model then open source model means nothing. They are synonym and mean the same thing.