4 ms·

Watching ollama pivot from a somewhat scrappy yet amazingly important and well designed open source project to a regular "for-profit company" is going to be sad

by smlacy 1y ago

Watching ollama pivot from a somewhat scrappy yet amazingly important and well designed open source project to a regular "for-profit company" is going to be sad. Thankfully, this may just leave more room for other open source local inference engines.

user- 1y ago
I remember them pivoting from being infra.hq
smeeth 1y ago
Their FOSS local inference service didn't go anywhere. This isn't Anaconda, they didn't do a bait and switch to screw their core users. It isn't sinful for devs to try and earn a living.
- blitzar 1y ago
  Yet. Their FOSS local inference service hasn't go anywhere ... yet.
- kermatt 1y ago
  Another perspective: If you earn a living using something someone else built, and expect them not to earn a living, your paycheck has a limited lifetime. “Someone” in this context could be a person, a team, or a corporate entity. Free may be temporary.
- dcreater 1y ago
  You can build this and go build something else as well. You don't need to morph the thing you built. That's underhanded
satvikpendem 1y ago
> important and well designed open source project It was always just a wrapper around the real well designed OSS, llama.cpp. Ollama even messes up the names of models by calling distilled models the name of the actual one, such as DeepSeek. Ollama's engineers created Docker Desktop, and you can see how that turned out, so I don't have much faith in them to continue to stay open given what a rugpull Docker Desktop became.
- Philpax 1y ago
  I wouldn't go as far as to say that llama.cpp is "well designed" (there be demons there), but I otherwise agree with the sentiment.
mchiang 1y ago
we have always been building in the open, and so is Ollama. All the core pieces of Ollama are open. There are areas where we want to be opinionated on the design to build the world we want to see. There are areas we will make money, and I wholly believe if we follow our conscious we can create something amazing for the world while making sure we can keep it fueled to keep it going for the long term. Some of the ideas in Turbo mode (completely optional) is to serve the users who want a faster GPU, and adding in additional capabilities like web search. We loved the experience so much that we decided to give web search to non-paid users too. (Again, it's fully optional). Now to prevent abuse and make sure our costs don't go out of hand, we require login. Can't we all just work together and create a better world? Or does it have to be so zero sum?
- xiphias2 1y ago
  I wanted to try web search to increase my privacy but it wanted to do login. For Turbo mode I understand the need for paying but the main poing of running a local model with web search is browsing from my computer without using any LLM provider. Also I want to get rid of the latency to US servers from Europe. If ollama can't do it, maybe a fork.
  - mchiang 1y ago
    login does not mean payment. It is free to use. It costs us to perform the web search, so we want to make sure it is not subject to abuse.
- dcreater 1y ago
  I'm sorry but your words don't match your actions.
shepardrtc 1y ago
I think this offering is a perfectly reasonable option for them to make money. We all have bills to pay, and this isn't interfering with their open source project, so I don't see anything wrong with it.
- Aeolun 1y ago
  > this isn't interfering with their open source project Wait until it makes significant amounts of money. Suddenly the priorities will be different. I don’t begrudge them wanting to make some money off it though.
  - shepardrtc 1y ago
    You may be right, but I hope you aren't!
otabdeveloper4 1y ago
[flagged]
- llmtosser 1y ago
  This is not true. No inference engine does all of: - Model switching - Unload after idle - Dynamic layer offload to CPU to avoid OOM
  - ekianjo 1y ago
    this can be added to llama.cpp with llama.swap currently so even without Ollama you are not far off
- mchiang 1y ago
  sorry that you feel the way you feel. :( I'm not sure which package we use that is triggering this. My guess is llama.cpp based on what I see on social? Ollama has long shifted to using our own engine. We do use llama.cpp for legacy and backwards compatibility. I want to be clear it's not a knock on the llama.cpp project either. There are certain features we want to build into Ollama, and we want to be opinionated on the experience we want to build. Have you supported our past gigs before? Why not be more happy and optimistic in seeing everyone build their dreams (success or not). If you go build a project of your dreams, I'd be supportive of it too.
  - Maxious 1y ago
    > Have you supported our past gigs before? Docker Desktop? One of the most memorable private equity rugpulls in developer tooling? Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me
- dangoodmanUT 1y ago
  Yes everyone should just write cpp to call local LLMs obviously
  - otabdeveloper4 1y ago
dangoodmanUT 1y ago
It was always a company
colesantiago 1y ago
ollama is YC and VC backed, this was inevitable and not surprising. All companies that raise outside investment follow this route. No exceptions. And yes this is how ollama will fall due to enshittification, for lack of a better word.
TuringNYC 1y ago
>> Watching ollama pivot from a somewhat scrappy yet amazingly important and well designed open source project to a regular "for-profit company" is going to be sad. if i could have consistent and seamless local-cloud dev that would be a nice win. everyone has to write things 3x over these days depending on your garden of choice, even with langchain/llamaindex
mythz 1y ago
Same, was just after a small lightweight solution where I can download, manage and run local models. Really not a fan of boarding the enshittification train ride with them. Always had a bad feeling when they didn't give ggerganov/llama.cpp their deserved credit for making Ollama possible in the first place, if it were a true OSS project they would have, but now makes more sense through the lens of a VC-funded project looking to grab as much marketshare as possible to avoid raising awareness for alternatives in OSS projects they depend on. Together with their new closed-source UI [1] it's time for me to switch back to llama.cpp's cli/server. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1meeyee/ollamas_new_gui_is_closed_source/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1meeyee/ollamas...
mark_l_watson 1y ago
I don't blame them. As soon as they offer a few more models available with the Turbo mode I plan on subscribing to their Turbo plan for a couple of months - a buying them a coffee, or keeping the lights on kind of thing. The Ollama app using the signed-in-only web search tool is really pretty good.

by smlacy 1y ago

user- 1y ago

I remember them pivoting from being infra.hq

smeeth 1y ago

Their FOSS local inference service didn't go anywhere. This isn't Anaconda, they didn't do a bait and switch to screw their core users. It isn't sinful for devs to try and earn a living.

blitzar 1y ago
Yet. Their FOSS local inference service hasn't go anywhere ... yet.
kermatt 1y ago
Another perspective: If you earn a living using something someone else built, and expect them not to earn a living, your paycheck has a limited lifetime. “Someone” in this context could be a person, a team, or a corporate entity. Free may be temporary.
dcreater 1y ago
You can build this and go build something else as well. You don't need to morph the thing you built. That's underhanded

satvikpendem 1y ago

> important and well designed open source project It was always just a wrapper around the real well designed OSS, llama.cpp. Ollama even messes up the names of models by calling distilled models the name of the actual one, such as DeepSeek. Ollama's engineers created Docker Desktop, and you can see how that turned out, so I don't have much faith in them to continue to stay open given what a rugpull Docker Desktop became.

Philpax 1y ago
I wouldn't go as far as to say that llama.cpp is "well designed" (there be demons there), but I otherwise agree with the sentiment.

mchiang 1y ago

we have always been building in the open, and so is Ollama. All the core pieces of Ollama are open. There are areas where we want to be opinionated on the design to build the world we want to see. There are areas we will make money, and I wholly believe if we follow our conscious we can create something amazing for the world while making sure we can keep it fueled to keep it going for the long term. Some of the ideas in Turbo mode (completely optional) is to serve the users who want a faster GPU, and adding in additional capabilities like web search. We loved the experience so much that we decided to give web search to non-paid users too. (Again, it's fully optional). Now to prevent abuse and make sure our costs don't go out of hand, we require login. Can't we all just work together and create a better world? Or does it have to be so zero sum?

xiphias2 1y ago
I wanted to try web search to increase my privacy but it wanted to do login. For Turbo mode I understand the need for paying but the main poing of running a local model with web search is browsing from my computer without using any LLM provider. Also I want to get rid of the latency to US servers from Europe. If ollama can't do it, maybe a fork.
- mchiang 1y ago
  login does not mean payment. It is free to use. It costs us to perform the web search, so we want to make sure it is not subject to abuse.
dcreater 1y ago
I'm sorry but your words don't match your actions.

shepardrtc 1y ago

I think this offering is a perfectly reasonable option for them to make money. We all have bills to pay, and this isn't interfering with their open source project, so I don't see anything wrong with it.

Aeolun 1y ago
> this isn't interfering with their open source project Wait until it makes significant amounts of money. Suddenly the priorities will be different. I don’t begrudge them wanting to make some money off it though.
- shepardrtc 1y ago
  You may be right, but I hope you aren't!

otabdeveloper4 1y ago

[flagged]

llmtosser 1y ago
This is not true. No inference engine does all of: - Model switching - Unload after idle - Dynamic layer offload to CPU to avoid OOM
- ekianjo 1y ago
  this can be added to llama.cpp with llama.swap currently so even without Ollama you are not far off
mchiang 1y ago
sorry that you feel the way you feel. :( I'm not sure which package we use that is triggering this. My guess is llama.cpp based on what I see on social? Ollama has long shifted to using our own engine. We do use llama.cpp for legacy and backwards compatibility. I want to be clear it's not a knock on the llama.cpp project either. There are certain features we want to build into Ollama, and we want to be opinionated on the experience we want to build. Have you supported our past gigs before? Why not be more happy and optimistic in seeing everyone build their dreams (success or not). If you go build a project of your dreams, I'd be supportive of it too.
- Maxious 1y ago
  > Have you supported our past gigs before? Docker Desktop? One of the most memorable private equity rugpulls in developer tooling? Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me
dangoodmanUT 1y ago
Yes everyone should just write cpp to call local LLMs obviously
- otabdeveloper4 1y ago

dangoodmanUT 1y ago

It was always a company

colesantiago 1y ago

ollama is YC and VC backed, this was inevitable and not surprising. All companies that raise outside investment follow this route. No exceptions. And yes this is how ollama will fall due to enshittification, for lack of a better word.

TuringNYC 1y ago

>> Watching ollama pivot from a somewhat scrappy yet amazingly important and well designed open source project to a regular "for-profit company" is going to be sad. if i could have consistent and seamless local-cloud dev that would be a nice win. everyone has to write things 3x over these days depending on your garden of choice, even with langchain/llamaindex

mythz 1y ago

Same, was just after a small lightweight solution where I can download, manage and run local models. Really not a fan of boarding the enshittification train ride with them. Always had a bad feeling when they didn't give ggerganov/llama.cpp their deserved credit for making Ollama possible in the first place, if it were a true OSS project they would have, but now makes more sense through the lens of a VC-funded project looking to grab as much marketshare as possible to avoid raising awareness for alternatives in OSS projects they depend on. Together with their new closed-source UI [1] it's time for me to switch back to llama.cpp's cli/server. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1meeyee/ollamas_new_gui_is_closed_source/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1meeyee/ollamas...

mark_l_watson 1y ago

I don't blame them. As soon as they offer a few more models available with the Turbo mode I plan on subscribing to their Turbo plan for a couple of months - a buying them a coffee, or keeping the lights on kind of thing. The Ollama app using the signed-in-only web search tool is really pretty good.