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A compiled executable is not any less software than the source code. But the point of open source code is not the ability to see the CPU instructions though, is
by entropi 2y ago
A compiled executable is not any less software than the source code. But the point of open source code is not the ability to see the CPU instructions though, is it?
Its about reproducibility and modifiability. Compiled executables (and their licences) lack that. The same as these downloadable blobs.
- llm_trw 2y agoYou make the start of a good point, but miss most of it. You can absolutely have open source machine code. The issue is and always has been that you need to have access to the same level of abstraction as the people writing the source code. The GPL specifically bans transpilers as a way to get around this. In ML there is _no_ level of abstraction other than the raw weights. Everything else is support machinery no different to an compiler, and os, or a physical computer to run the code on. Linux isn't closed source because they don't ship a C compiler with their code. Why should llama models be any different?