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https://raw.githubusercontent.com/apple/ml-sharp/refs/heads/main/LICENSE_MODEL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/apple/ml-sharp/refs/heads/... "Exclusively for

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/apple/ml-sharp/refs/heads/main/LICENSE_MODEL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/apple/ml-sharp/refs/heads/... "Exclusively for research purposes" so not actually open source.

hwers 10mo ago
[flagged]
- tremon 10mo ago
  https://opensource.org/osd#fields-of-endeavor https://opensource.org/osd#fields-of-endeavor > The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, [..]
  - ecb_penguin 10mo ago
    While most people follow the OSD criteria, there is nothing that says open source software must follow it. Nor is the OSD the only set of criteria or the only definition. Open source means the source is available. Anything else is just political.
    - nativeit 10mo ago
      Now you get to graduate into the pedantry of defining the word “source”.
      - ecb_penguin 10mo ago
        There's no reason for pedantry. Source is pretty well defined.
        immibis 10mo ago
        Which is how we know that AI models don't have any - and therefore can't be open source.
        Aachen 10mo ago
        Still blows my mind that "binaries available" is called open source in the machine learning sphere. It's like calling Office 2007 open source (as opposed to the current browser versions) because you could run the binaries on a local machine
    - _flux 10mo ago
      > Open source means the source is available. Anything else is just political. Where was that defined so? And most of all, given the domain of information technology, who understand open source to cover cases where the source is available ie. only for reviewing? The purpose of words and terms is so that people can exchange ideas effectively and precisely, without needing to explain the terms every time from the grounds up. Having different groups having divergent definitions on the same words is counterproductive towards that goal. In my view, labeling a release "open source" with very big limitations on how the source is used is just not about marketing, it's miscommunication. If "open source" and "source available" (and "open weights") mean the same thing, the how come people have come up with the two terms to begin with? The difference is recognized in official contexts as well, i.e. https://web.archive.org/web/20180724032116/https://dodcio.defense.gov/Open-Source-Software-FAQ/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180724032116/https://dodcio.de... (search for "source available"; unfortunately linking directly doesn't seem to work with archive.org pages). It doesn't seem there is any benefit in using less precise terms when better-defined ones are available.
      - ecb_penguin 10mo ago
        [flagged]
    - swiftcoder 10mo ago
      > Open source means the source is available. Anything else is just political. We don't have to have this debate again. Folks have tried this rhetorical tack so often there is an entire wikipedia page[1] dedicated to explaining the difference between source available and open source... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software
      - ecb_penguin 10mo ago
        This is an opinion article and you should realize that opinions do not make definitions. "Conversely, Richard Stallman argues the "obvious meaning" of term "open source" is that the source code is public/accessible for inspection, without necessarily any other rights granted" See, here's another Wikipedia article with another opinion that disagrees, and RMS is obviously an authority. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source#%22Open%22_versus_%22free%22_versus_%22free_and_open%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source#%22Open%22_versus_... All of this is pointless so the common and accepted definition should be preferred. Which does not add extra political criteria for requirements.
        circuit10 10mo ago
        In my experience the common and accepted definition generally matches with the one the OSI uses, people generally use “shared source” or something to refer to things that don’t fit that
        ecb_penguin 10mo ago
        Well, you'd be wrong: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/open-source https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/open-source In case you don't know, the dictionary doesn't prescribe meaning, it catalogs the commonly accepted usage of a word. That's why it listed "literally" to mean "figuratively", because along the way, people started using "literally" to mean "figuratively", so that's the definition now. The common definition of open source does not match the OSI definition... > people generally use “shared source” or something "Shared source" was a Microsoft license and not at all generally accepted by anyone. A quick Google search found no references to this term used to describe open source.
  - tzs 10mo ago
    Apparently licenses no longer have to actually meet all 10 of the criteria listed there to count as open source. OSI says AGPLv3 is open source, for example, even though it fails #10 ("No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface"). AGPLv3 has provisions that are predicated on remote interaction over computer networks. Put modified AGPLv3 software on a computer that users interact with over RS232 terminals and you don't have to give users the source. Replace those RS232 terminals with X servers that let the users interact with the program over Ethernet and you do have to give those users the source.
    - tremon 10mo ago
      That's pure sophistry, do better. You can start by quoting the part of AGPLv3 that specifically mentions Ethernet. You also need to explain how a set of terminals connected via RS232 does not constitute a "computer network".
      - tzs 10mo ago
        An RS232 connection between serial ports on a computer and terminal has generally never been considered to be a network.
  - immibis 10mo ago
    The OSI (a consortium of cloud companies who benefit when you write nonfree software for them) is not actually an authority on what the words "open source" mean, no matter how hard they try to insert themselves into that role. Models can't be open source anyway, because they don't have source.
- Aachen 10mo ago
  That's source-available: you get to see the code and learn from it, but if you're not allowed to use it however you want (with as only common restrictions that you must then credit the creator(s) and also allow others the same freedom on derivative works) then it's not the traditional definition of open source
- wahnfrieden 10mo ago
  The only popular one I know is CC-NC but that is not open source
- cwillu 10mo ago
  And you would be wrong as a simple question of fact.
  - ecb_penguin 10mo ago
    Do you think the OSD is law or something?
    - cwillu 10mo ago
      Who said anything about law?
      - ecb_penguin 10mo ago
        You, when you confused OSI's opinion with "fact". There's no natural law or man-made law that makes your opinion fact.
        cwillu 10mo ago
        Okay there bud.
echelon 10mo ago
That sucks. I'm writing open desktop software that uses WorldLabs splats for consistent location filmmaking, and it's an awesome tool: https://youtube.com/watch?v=iD999naQq9A https://youtube.com/watch?v=iD999naQq9A This next year is going to be about controlling a priori what your images and videos will look like before you generate them. 3D splats are going to be incredibly useful for film and graphics design. You can rotate the camera around and get predictable, consistent details. We need more Gaussian models. I hope the Chinese AI companies start building them.
- wkat4242 10mo ago
  Making 3D worlds like that is impressive. I used to build some VR worlds (hobby) and content generation is a huge time sink. I wonder if this tech will become accessible for that soon.
  - echelon 10mo ago
    This is all going to become super accessible to everyone. And it'll become fast and eventually free. Everyone will be able to flex their muscles as a creative. Everyone will be able to become an artist (expressing themselves though their unique lens) without putting points into a mechanical skill that is dimensionally orthogonal to idea expression and communication. This is the "bicycle of the mind" that Steve Jobs talked about 40 some years ago. We've all had keyboards with which to express ourselves and communicate, but soon everyone will be able to visually articulate themselves and their thoughts. It's going to be so uplifting for society. In fifty years we'll even be able to render our direct thoughts and mold them like clay. Share them directly with one another. Co-think.
zarzavat 10mo ago
There's no reason to believe that weights are copyrightable. The only reason to pay attention to this "license" is because it's enforced by Apple, in that sense they can write whatever they want in it, "this model requires giving ownership of your first born son to Apple", etc. The content is irrelevant.
- _alternator_ 10mo ago
  This. Tables of numbers are explicitly not subject to copyright; that’s a copyright 101 fact. Any of the code that wraps the model or makes it useful is subject to copyright. But the weights themselves are as unrestricted as it gets.
  - fragmede 10mo ago
    Disney would like you have a word with you. Why would their pile of numbers that represent Avatar3.m4a be any more subject to copyright than Apple_2D_3D.bin. Or GPT52.mlx or Opus45.gguf?
  - schrototo 10mo ago
    That is simply not true. The details might vary by jurisdiction and the protection might not be under the exact name of “copyright” but there most certainly are comparable legal protections for the contents of databases (“tables of numbers”). See for example: https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/running-business/intellectual-property/database-protection/index_en.htm https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/running-business/intel...
  - messe 10mo ago
    > This. Tables of numbers are explicitly not subject to copyright; that’s a copyright 101 fact. Ok, but there's clearly more nuance there. Otherwise I could claim that any mp3 file I wanted to distribute is just a table of 8-bit integers and therefore not subject to copyright.
    - f1shy 10mo ago
      I wanted to reply in this direction. Ultimately, literally everything and anything in SW is a sequence of numbers, that anybody could easily put in some kind of table form. I don’t know where the catch is, but that sentence can not be true in general.
sa-code 10mo ago
Should the title be corrected to source-available?
- RobotToaster 10mo ago
  "weights-available" is probably the correct term, since it doesn't look like the training data is available.
  - ecb_penguin 10mo ago
    Training data is not source code so that's irrelevant
    - _flux 10mo ago
      It kind of is, though. You use some input material to produce the weights via some process, even if the weights might not become exactly the same every time you reproduce the process; the production of the weights isn't done by working with the weights, but with the training material and the process to convert them into weights. The analogy to source code and the resulting binaries is there.
      - ecb_penguin 10mo ago
        Training data and the weights produced are not source code, just as access to the resulting binaries are not a requirement for open source. Open source does not require full working implementations. There's no requirement that a code snippet that I release be fully working and identical to a complete solution.
        deleted 10mo ago
        [deleted]
        _flux 10mo ago
        So we are on agreement that "weights" are not source code. Training data might not also be actual "code", but it is source. After all, the model trained using that data tries to estimate its training data. It is the ground truth for the model. About the access of binaries or providing working implementations, where did those come from? I don't think this thread was discussing those at all. Indeed I would be willing to call something an "open source model" if it came without weights, but did come with the training data and with a documented process (preferably executable); and a release with just the training data could be called "open dataset" while the software to run the training would be just plain old open source software. And, of course, a model with only the model data distributed with an open license is relatively commonly called "open weights", this being pretty self-explanatory term.
ffsm8 10mo ago
The readme doesn't claim its open source either from what I can tell. Seems to be just a misguided title by the person who submitted it to HN The only reference seems to be in the acknowledgement, saying that this builds ontop of open source software
- runjake 10mo ago
  Link to the actual project license, since it hasn't been referenced yet: https://github.com/apple/ml-sharp/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/apple/ml-sharp/blob/main/LICENSE Between this and the model's license, it seems like one is stuck with using this for personal use?
- jonas21 10mo ago
  The code is licensed [1] under the "Apple MIT" license [2], which is considered open-source. The weights are under a different, more restrictive license. This is mentioned at the bottom of the README. [1] https://github.com/apple/ml-sharp/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/apple/ml-sharp/blob/main/LICENSE [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/Apple_MIT_License https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/Apple_MIT_License
  - echelon 10mo ago
    This is optimally foolish. It effectively prevents the community from using Apple's solution, but gives the Chinese everything they need to duplicate the results and push their own version. I expect a Hunyuan-branded version of this model in six months. Probably with lots of improvements. I'm all for Chinese model takeover if this is how US tech giants treat AI. You can't horde the flames forever, US hyperscalers. The DoD ought to be advocating for a strong domestic open source stance to ensure our ecosystem doesn't get washed away. AI czar David Sacks has this view, but I suppose it's been falling on deaf ears when the hyperscalers crowd out the conversation.
    - elAhmo 10mo ago
      What DoD has to do with a release of this model?
andy99 10mo ago
Meta’s campaign to corrupt the meaning of Open Source was unfortunately very successful and now most people associate releasing the weights with open source.
- Blackthorn 10mo ago
  It's deliciously ironic how a campaign to dilute the meaning of free software ended up getting diluted itself.
  - sho_hn 10mo ago
    It's gratifying. I used to tilt at windmills on HN about this and people would be telling me with absolute condescension how the ship had sailed regarding the definition of Open Source, relegating my own life's work to anachronism. People slowly waking up to how daft and hypecycle misusing a term was all along has been amazing.
    - archerx 10mo ago
      [flagged]
      - coliveira 10mo ago
        I think exactly like this. If I created a tool and it were used for free by billion dollar corporations to enrich themselves, I would consider it a personal loss.
        lrvick 10mo ago
        Personally I open source things often specifically to kill the value proposition of companies trying to keep people in their walled gardens.
        archerx 10mo ago
        My post got flagged proving my point.
LtWorf 10mo ago
When AI and open source is used together you can be sure it's not open source.
thebruce87m 10mo ago
I’m going to research if I can make a profitable product from it. I’ll publish the results of course.
- eleventyseven 10mo ago
  Pretty sure this is a joke, but the actual license is written by lawyers who know what they are doing: > “Research Purposes” means non-commercial scientific research and academic development activities, such as experimentation, analysis, testing conducted by You with the sole intent to advance scientific knowledge and research. “Research Purposes” does not include any commercial exploitation, product development or use in any commercial product or service.
  - LexGray 10mo ago
    Does sole intent to advance scientific knowledge even exist as a category anymore? I was given modern research is all pay to play where the grant sponsor decided the topic and what can be done with the results.
eviks 10mo ago
Interesting, the main license doesn't mention the limit, maybe that's why the op got confused https://github.com/apple/ml-sharp/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/apple/ml-sharp/blob/main/LICENSE
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
wasting_time 10mo ago
Is there any model that is actually free as in freedom (not necessarily gratis)?
- dragonwriter 10mo ago
  Yes, many models recently have been released under Apache 2.0, both Free and gratis. I don't think any in this particular space (image-to-3d gaussian representation) are, but then this is the first model I’ve seen in that space at all.
randyrand 10mo ago
It’s open source, just not open domain.
- AnonymousPlanet 10mo ago
  If it's open source, where are the sources? And how do I make my own from those sources?
- thayne 10mo ago
  One of the criteria for being open source is no discrimination against fields of endeavor. This license clearly discriminates against any field of endeavor other than (non-commercial) research. https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd
littlestymaar 10mo ago
Your daily reminder that neural network weights aren't creative work and as such aren't subject to copyright protection in the first place. The “license” is purely cosmetic (or rather, it has an internal purpose: it's being put there by the ML scientists who want to share their work and have to deal with the corporate reluctance to do so).
m4ck_ 10mo ago
If all these AI models were trained on copyrighted materials for which the trainers had no right to, is it wrong to steal their models and use them however we want? Morally I'd say absolutely not, but I"m sure these AI bros would vigorously defend their own IP, even if it was built on stolen IP created by humans.
- dragonwriter 10mo ago
  > If all these AI models were trained on copyrighted materials for which the trainers had no right to, is it wrong to steal their models and use them however we want? If (which the courts seem to be pretty consistently finding) training models on copyright-protected works generally is fair use, though using models to produce works which would violate copyright if made by other means with reference to the source material is still a copyright violation, then training has no bearing on the legality of copying the models. (Even if it wasn't, then copying and using the models at all would violate the copyright of the original owners of the training material again and be illegal irrespective of the “license” offered by the model trainer.) Morally? Well, pretty much the same dichotomy applies; if training the model isn't a violation of the source material's creators' rights, then the fact it was trained without permission has no bearing on the morality of using the model without the trainers permission, if it is a violation of the source material's creators' rights, then so is using the model irrespective of the trainer's “license”, as the trainer has no right to permit further use of the material they had no right to create. The idea that the model is an intrusion on the rights of the creators of the materials used in training and that this makes use of the model more rather than less permissibly, legally or morally, takes some bizarre mental gymnastics.
bsnnkv 10mo ago
Nice to see some more interesting use of this kind of educational source licensing

hwers 10mo ago

[flagged]

tremon 10mo ago
https://opensource.org/osd#fields-of-endeavor https://opensource.org/osd#fields-of-endeavor > The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, [..]
- ecb_penguin 10mo ago
  While most people follow the OSD criteria, there is nothing that says open source software must follow it. Nor is the OSD the only set of criteria or the only definition. Open source means the source is available. Anything else is just political.
  - nativeit 10mo ago
    Now you get to graduate into the pedantry of defining the word “source”.
    - ecb_penguin 10mo ago
      There's no reason for pedantry. Source is pretty well defined.
      - immibis 10mo ago
        Which is how we know that AI models don't have any - and therefore can't be open source.
        Aachen 10mo ago
        Still blows my mind that "binaries available" is called open source in the machine learning sphere. It's like calling Office 2007 open source (as opposed to the current browser versions) because you could run the binaries on a local machine
  - _flux 10mo ago
    > Open source means the source is available. Anything else is just political. Where was that defined so? And most of all, given the domain of information technology, who understand open source to cover cases where the source is available ie. only for reviewing? The purpose of words and terms is so that people can exchange ideas effectively and precisely, without needing to explain the terms every time from the grounds up. Having different groups having divergent definitions on the same words is counterproductive towards that goal. In my view, labeling a release "open source" with very big limitations on how the source is used is just not about marketing, it's miscommunication. If "open source" and "source available" (and "open weights") mean the same thing, the how come people have come up with the two terms to begin with? The difference is recognized in official contexts as well, i.e. https://web.archive.org/web/20180724032116/https://dodcio.defense.gov/Open-Source-Software-FAQ/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180724032116/https://dodcio.de... (search for "source available"; unfortunately linking directly doesn't seem to work with archive.org pages). It doesn't seem there is any benefit in using less precise terms when better-defined ones are available.
    - ecb_penguin 10mo ago
      [flagged]
  - swiftcoder 10mo ago
    > Open source means the source is available. Anything else is just political. We don't have to have this debate again. Folks have tried this rhetorical tack so often there is an entire wikipedia page[1] dedicated to explaining the difference between source available and open source... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software
    - ecb_penguin 10mo ago
      This is an opinion article and you should realize that opinions do not make definitions. "Conversely, Richard Stallman argues the "obvious meaning" of term "open source" is that the source code is public/accessible for inspection, without necessarily any other rights granted" See, here's another Wikipedia article with another opinion that disagrees, and RMS is obviously an authority. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source#%22Open%22_versus_%22free%22_versus_%22free_and_open%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source#%22Open%22_versus_... All of this is pointless so the common and accepted definition should be preferred. Which does not add extra political criteria for requirements.
      - circuit10 10mo ago
        In my experience the common and accepted definition generally matches with the one the OSI uses, people generally use “shared source” or something to refer to things that don’t fit that
        ecb_penguin 10mo ago
        Well, you'd be wrong: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/open-source https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/open-source In case you don't know, the dictionary doesn't prescribe meaning, it catalogs the commonly accepted usage of a word. That's why it listed "literally" to mean "figuratively", because along the way, people started using "literally" to mean "figuratively", so that's the definition now. The common definition of open source does not match the OSI definition... > people generally use “shared source” or something "Shared source" was a Microsoft license and not at all generally accepted by anyone. A quick Google search found no references to this term used to describe open source.
- tzs 10mo ago
  Apparently licenses no longer have to actually meet all 10 of the criteria listed there to count as open source. OSI says AGPLv3 is open source, for example, even though it fails #10 ("No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface"). AGPLv3 has provisions that are predicated on remote interaction over computer networks. Put modified AGPLv3 software on a computer that users interact with over RS232 terminals and you don't have to give users the source. Replace those RS232 terminals with X servers that let the users interact with the program over Ethernet and you do have to give those users the source.
  - tremon 10mo ago
    That's pure sophistry, do better. You can start by quoting the part of AGPLv3 that specifically mentions Ethernet. You also need to explain how a set of terminals connected via RS232 does not constitute a "computer network".
    - tzs 10mo ago
      An RS232 connection between serial ports on a computer and terminal has generally never been considered to be a network.
- immibis 10mo ago
  The OSI (a consortium of cloud companies who benefit when you write nonfree software for them) is not actually an authority on what the words "open source" mean, no matter how hard they try to insert themselves into that role. Models can't be open source anyway, because they don't have source.
Aachen 10mo ago
That's source-available: you get to see the code and learn from it, but if you're not allowed to use it however you want (with as only common restrictions that you must then credit the creator(s) and also allow others the same freedom on derivative works) then it's not the traditional definition of open source
wahnfrieden 10mo ago
The only popular one I know is CC-NC but that is not open source
cwillu 10mo ago
And you would be wrong as a simple question of fact.
- ecb_penguin 10mo ago
  Do you think the OSD is law or something?
  - cwillu 10mo ago
    Who said anything about law?
    - ecb_penguin 10mo ago
      You, when you confused OSI's opinion with "fact". There's no natural law or man-made law that makes your opinion fact.
      - cwillu 10mo ago
        Okay there bud.

echelon 10mo ago

That sucks. I'm writing open desktop software that uses WorldLabs splats for consistent location filmmaking, and it's an awesome tool: https://youtube.com/watch?v=iD999naQq9A https://youtube.com/watch?v=iD999naQq9A This next year is going to be about controlling a priori what your images and videos will look like before you generate them. 3D splats are going to be incredibly useful for film and graphics design. You can rotate the camera around and get predictable, consistent details. We need more Gaussian models. I hope the Chinese AI companies start building them.

wkat4242 10mo ago
Making 3D worlds like that is impressive. I used to build some VR worlds (hobby) and content generation is a huge time sink. I wonder if this tech will become accessible for that soon.
- echelon 10mo ago
  This is all going to become super accessible to everyone. And it'll become fast and eventually free. Everyone will be able to flex their muscles as a creative. Everyone will be able to become an artist (expressing themselves though their unique lens) without putting points into a mechanical skill that is dimensionally orthogonal to idea expression and communication. This is the "bicycle of the mind" that Steve Jobs talked about 40 some years ago. We've all had keyboards with which to express ourselves and communicate, but soon everyone will be able to visually articulate themselves and their thoughts. It's going to be so uplifting for society. In fifty years we'll even be able to render our direct thoughts and mold them like clay. Share them directly with one another. Co-think.

zarzavat 10mo ago

There's no reason to believe that weights are copyrightable. The only reason to pay attention to this "license" is because it's enforced by Apple, in that sense they can write whatever they want in it, "this model requires giving ownership of your first born son to Apple", etc. The content is irrelevant.

_alternator_ 10mo ago
This. Tables of numbers are explicitly not subject to copyright; that’s a copyright 101 fact. Any of the code that wraps the model or makes it useful is subject to copyright. But the weights themselves are as unrestricted as it gets.
- fragmede 10mo ago
  Disney would like you have a word with you. Why would their pile of numbers that represent Avatar3.m4a be any more subject to copyright than Apple_2D_3D.bin. Or GPT52.mlx or Opus45.gguf?
- schrototo 10mo ago
  That is simply not true. The details might vary by jurisdiction and the protection might not be under the exact name of “copyright” but there most certainly are comparable legal protections for the contents of databases (“tables of numbers”). See for example: https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/running-business/intellectual-property/database-protection/index_en.htm https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/running-business/intel...
- messe 10mo ago
  > This. Tables of numbers are explicitly not subject to copyright; that’s a copyright 101 fact. Ok, but there's clearly more nuance there. Otherwise I could claim that any mp3 file I wanted to distribute is just a table of 8-bit integers and therefore not subject to copyright.
  - f1shy 10mo ago
    I wanted to reply in this direction. Ultimately, literally everything and anything in SW is a sequence of numbers, that anybody could easily put in some kind of table form. I don’t know where the catch is, but that sentence can not be true in general.

sa-code 10mo ago

Should the title be corrected to source-available?

RobotToaster 10mo ago
"weights-available" is probably the correct term, since it doesn't look like the training data is available.
- ecb_penguin 10mo ago
  Training data is not source code so that's irrelevant
  - _flux 10mo ago
    It kind of is, though. You use some input material to produce the weights via some process, even if the weights might not become exactly the same every time you reproduce the process; the production of the weights isn't done by working with the weights, but with the training material and the process to convert them into weights. The analogy to source code and the resulting binaries is there.
    - ecb_penguin 10mo ago
      Training data and the weights produced are not source code, just as access to the resulting binaries are not a requirement for open source. Open source does not require full working implementations. There's no requirement that a code snippet that I release be fully working and identical to a complete solution.
      - deleted 10mo ago
        [deleted]
      - _flux 10mo ago
        So we are on agreement that "weights" are not source code. Training data might not also be actual "code", but it is source. After all, the model trained using that data tries to estimate its training data. It is the ground truth for the model. About the access of binaries or providing working implementations, where did those come from? I don't think this thread was discussing those at all. Indeed I would be willing to call something an "open source model" if it came without weights, but did come with the training data and with a documented process (preferably executable); and a release with just the training data could be called "open dataset" while the software to run the training would be just plain old open source software. And, of course, a model with only the model data distributed with an open license is relatively commonly called "open weights", this being pretty self-explanatory term.

ffsm8 10mo ago

The readme doesn't claim its open source either from what I can tell. Seems to be just a misguided title by the person who submitted it to HN The only reference seems to be in the acknowledgement, saying that this builds ontop of open source software

runjake 10mo ago
Link to the actual project license, since it hasn't been referenced yet: https://github.com/apple/ml-sharp/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/apple/ml-sharp/blob/main/LICENSE Between this and the model's license, it seems like one is stuck with using this for personal use?
jonas21 10mo ago
The code is licensed [1] under the "Apple MIT" license [2], which is considered open-source. The weights are under a different, more restrictive license. This is mentioned at the bottom of the README. [1] https://github.com/apple/ml-sharp/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/apple/ml-sharp/blob/main/LICENSE [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/Apple_MIT_License https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/Apple_MIT_License
- echelon 10mo ago
  This is optimally foolish. It effectively prevents the community from using Apple's solution, but gives the Chinese everything they need to duplicate the results and push their own version. I expect a Hunyuan-branded version of this model in six months. Probably with lots of improvements. I'm all for Chinese model takeover if this is how US tech giants treat AI. You can't horde the flames forever, US hyperscalers. The DoD ought to be advocating for a strong domestic open source stance to ensure our ecosystem doesn't get washed away. AI czar David Sacks has this view, but I suppose it's been falling on deaf ears when the hyperscalers crowd out the conversation.
  - elAhmo 10mo ago
    What DoD has to do with a release of this model?

andy99 10mo ago

Meta’s campaign to corrupt the meaning of Open Source was unfortunately very successful and now most people associate releasing the weights with open source.

Blackthorn 10mo ago
It's deliciously ironic how a campaign to dilute the meaning of free software ended up getting diluted itself.
- sho_hn 10mo ago
  It's gratifying. I used to tilt at windmills on HN about this and people would be telling me with absolute condescension how the ship had sailed regarding the definition of Open Source, relegating my own life's work to anachronism. People slowly waking up to how daft and hypecycle misusing a term was all along has been amazing.
  - archerx 10mo ago
    [flagged]
    - coliveira 10mo ago
      I think exactly like this. If I created a tool and it were used for free by billion dollar corporations to enrich themselves, I would consider it a personal loss.
      - lrvick 10mo ago
        Personally I open source things often specifically to kill the value proposition of companies trying to keep people in their walled gardens.
      - archerx 10mo ago
        My post got flagged proving my point.

LtWorf 10mo ago

When AI and open source is used together you can be sure it's not open source.

thebruce87m 10mo ago

I’m going to research if I can make a profitable product from it. I’ll publish the results of course.

eleventyseven 10mo ago
Pretty sure this is a joke, but the actual license is written by lawyers who know what they are doing: > “Research Purposes” means non-commercial scientific research and academic development activities, such as experimentation, analysis, testing conducted by You with the sole intent to advance scientific knowledge and research. “Research Purposes” does not include any commercial exploitation, product development or use in any commercial product or service.
- LexGray 10mo ago
  Does sole intent to advance scientific knowledge even exist as a category anymore? I was given modern research is all pay to play where the grant sponsor decided the topic and what can be done with the results.

eviks 10mo ago

Interesting, the main license doesn't mention the limit, maybe that's why the op got confused https://github.com/apple/ml-sharp/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/apple/ml-sharp/blob/main/LICENSE

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

wasting_time 10mo ago

Is there any model that is actually free as in freedom (not necessarily gratis)?

dragonwriter 10mo ago
Yes, many models recently have been released under Apache 2.0, both Free and gratis. I don't think any in this particular space (image-to-3d gaussian representation) are, but then this is the first model I’ve seen in that space at all.

randyrand 10mo ago

It’s open source, just not open domain.

AnonymousPlanet 10mo ago
If it's open source, where are the sources? And how do I make my own from those sources?
thayne 10mo ago
One of the criteria for being open source is no discrimination against fields of endeavor. This license clearly discriminates against any field of endeavor other than (non-commercial) research. https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd

littlestymaar 10mo ago

Your daily reminder that neural network weights aren't creative work and as such aren't subject to copyright protection in the first place. The “license” is purely cosmetic (or rather, it has an internal purpose: it's being put there by the ML scientists who want to share their work and have to deal with the corporate reluctance to do so).

m4ck_ 10mo ago

If all these AI models were trained on copyrighted materials for which the trainers had no right to, is it wrong to steal their models and use them however we want? Morally I'd say absolutely not, but I"m sure these AI bros would vigorously defend their own IP, even if it was built on stolen IP created by humans.

dragonwriter 10mo ago
> If all these AI models were trained on copyrighted materials for which the trainers had no right to, is it wrong to steal their models and use them however we want? If (which the courts seem to be pretty consistently finding) training models on copyright-protected works generally is fair use, though using models to produce works which would violate copyright if made by other means with reference to the source material is still a copyright violation, then training has no bearing on the legality of copying the models. (Even if it wasn't, then copying and using the models at all would violate the copyright of the original owners of the training material again and be illegal irrespective of the “license” offered by the model trainer.) Morally? Well, pretty much the same dichotomy applies; if training the model isn't a violation of the source material's creators' rights, then the fact it was trained without permission has no bearing on the morality of using the model without the trainers permission, if it is a violation of the source material's creators' rights, then so is using the model irrespective of the trainer's “license”, as the trainer has no right to permit further use of the material they had no right to create. The idea that the model is an intrusion on the rights of the creators of the materials used in training and that this makes use of the model more rather than less permissibly, legally or morally, takes some bizarre mental gymnastics.

bsnnkv 10mo ago

Nice to see some more interesting use of this kind of educational source licensing