5 ms·

This is a cool way of approaching AI models. I'm a big fan of local LLMs, local specific models like this should be even more powerful. > Every model is free u

by 1dom 25d ago

This is a cool way of approaching AI models. I'm a big fan of local LLMs, local specific models like this should be even more powerful. > Every model is free up to 100k monthly active devices. No tokens, no logins. I dunno about the business model though. Cloud LLM billing makes sense: you're getting another computer to do work with each request, and using their compute via their gateway that they bill you. These local models are like old school software. They're producing the weights, and then giving them to people. If I'm happy with the weights you've given me, and I'm not using your compute for inference and not wanting or needing any updates off you, why should you continue getting money off me and my customers? The whole "but we need to keep it updated for your security" doesn't really work as well for software designed to run fully offline like these local models are. I'm not saying they shouldn't get paid, but I guess I feel a personal sadness that it's less obvious how to successfully monetise such a sincerely useful and beneficial approach towards AI models.

donavanm 25d ago
> why should you continue getting money off me and my customers? Welcome to the concept of fair market value. Less snarkily you're conflating the concepts of price and cost; theyre not the same thing and theyre not the same for you or the seller.
- Muromec 25d ago
  How does piracy of digital content and software factor into this concept?
handfuloflight 25d ago
How is it not obvious and fair that they are asking you to pay them when you see success (defined as >100K MAU)? How more aligned can you and them be besides this?
- Muromec 25d ago
  When I buy I chair I don't pay a share of my income to the furniture shop when I get rich. I would buy another chair at some point too, maybe fancier one (or the same). Because chairs are commodity. I do however pay taxes to the government based on my income because it keeps doing ongoing maintenance on everything. Everyone wants to be paid forever for something they produced once is some kind of a mind virus. Make me a better chair and maybe I will buy it, but don't expect to become a trillion dollar company. It's deeply unfair to everyone who wants to be a trillion dollar company of course. What is really funny to me -- the ones that do make it to collect the rent indefinitely also decrease their own taxes paid to the government AND also decrease the amount of contribution to society by making less and shittier stuff.
  - handfuloflight 25d ago
    Analogy doesn't apply to this case, as you are paying for the chair upfront but not paying for the model weights upfront.
    - Muromec 25d ago
      I'm also not downloading a chair, because why would it?
      - handfuloflight 25d ago
        Exactly, so your analogy is useless.
    - 1dom 25d ago
      The only reason my chair manufacturer would be entitled to the proceeds of my success whilst I was in their chair is if I hadn't already paid them for the work they put into making the chair for me. Even then, why would my success with their product have anything to do with how much they can charge me for their labour? What other things work like that outside of the modern tech world? Seriously, look around you, pick a thing, imagine a world where the price you paid for that thing hinged on your personal individual success with that thing. edit: to clarify, my point is why can't we pay for the model weights up front for offline models? Why would we continue paying for things we don't want/need anymore, like updates for offline software that does it's job fine?
chadash 25d ago
> If I'm happy with the weights you've given me, and I'm not using your compute for inference and not wanting or needing any updates off you, why should you continue getting money off me and my customers? I definitely understand the appeal of the desire to “buy it once”, but I think there are a few issues: - almost no software is static. Look at a package like python Requests and even though it does the simplest thing and has barely changed from a user perspective, it gets updated all the time. This is true for most software. This is doubly true for something like local AI models where both the software and the hardware are changing constantly. Subscriptions motivate sellers to keep their software up to date. - If I’m an app developer, the idea that I can try something out for $X/month is very appealing versus making an upfront investment of (let’s say) $X*20. This is doubly true for something like local models where I will almost certainly want something new when the models improve. - To add to the first point, I work at a startup. No one asks questions when I want $20/month licenses. But let’s say I want something that’s gonna be in the 5 figure range annually. If I go to my CFO and ask for $50k upfront and then we implement something and the project fails, I look like an idiot. If I ask for $2000/mo budget for something and then we try it for two months and it fails, no one cares. Subscriptions are just safer in this sense.
- TechSquidTV 25d ago
  LLMs are static though.
  - deleted 25d ago
    [deleted]
  - sejje 25d ago
    In the way that, say, Garmin Maps are static, I agree.
    - Caracas288 25d ago
      Very much like map CD-rom updates, I think a lot of people wouldn't mind paying per-update for these models, and would understand the implications. That is, if there weren't so many open models available.
Aurornis 25d ago
> If I'm happy with the weights you've given me, and I'm not using your compute for inference and not wanting or needing any updates off you, why should you continue getting money off me and my customers? Because they own the IP and they get to decide the terms of how it’s licensed. This is like a company taking open source software, saying they like the code the community has given them, and asking why they should continue having to respect the terms of the license after downloading the code. The availability of the software (or models) does not equal a free license to use as you please. A license allowing 100K devices for free is very generous. The businesses selling more than 100K units of anything will be significant operations. It’s fair that they’re asked to contribute financially.
- sejje 25d ago
  He's not arguing about their right to license it how they please. He's arguing that someone ought to choose to do it another way. You made up a position to argue against.
  - Aurornis 25d ago
    No, you’re arguing against the first part of my comment without reading the whole thing where I addressed the value proposition. A 100K free device license is a generous gift to small companies. Past 100K, it’s more than fair to ask that companies contribute. That’s a significant operation at that point and the model has obviously provided value. If the model doesn’t provide any value to a >100K device company then they should train their own or not use it. I could see how people unfamiliar with per-device or per-unit licensing fees would be confused, but this is a common business model. Scaling payments with the customer’s business success is one of the more fair ways to align vendor and customer while also providing a nice way to give freely to smaller businesses like this. It’s a good thing. It’s silly that a company giving away a license for 100K devices, which covers small and medium hardware operations, is being criticized for this of all things.
- serf 25d ago
  >Because they own the IP and they get to decide the terms of how it’s licensed. how'd that work out for the rest of IP owners that had their stuff used as training data for use in model creation? was the material they trained on produced in-house?
embedding-shape 25d ago
How would a model where you pay per each model/weight update feel like? More similar to traditional software, where you'd get the current version, maybe even free/rebated version upgrade to the next, but then have to do another purchase to get the latest version? Or something similar to that? Feels like it'd be more aligned with how the business and users would produce and use it, it'd be something like: "We've done a bunch of research and output, here is the thing, you can buy it, and we'll work on the next, then you can pay again for the next if you'd like".
- 1dom 25d ago
  This seems like common sense. I guess it's not seen as common sense any more because the assumption is that all software is going to be using someone else's compute, or be connected to the internet and therefore require regular updates. If neither of those are true, a subscription or recurring license or similar regular fee just feels like greed/robbery.
DrScientist 25d ago
As far as I can see there is no clear pricing once you go beyond the free tier - it's contact sales. This is actually a classic enterprise software approach - as there are no fixed per unit production costs to cover, the pricing is very elastic. ie each license is probably a negotiation - if you see your app for a one off fee then they want a one-off cut - if you sell a subscription they may want a cut of that instead. Obviously the risk is if you bake it in and your app becomes successful they may want a larger cut than you can afford, but if they don't negotiate in good faith they won't last very long.
- sureMan6 25d ago
  What's worrying for them is nothing they're doing is impossible to be recreated, if you bake it in and you don't want to pay rent you can fine tune your own model
  - DrScientist 24d ago
    Sure. That's a problem with the whole AI space - it's eating itself at a incredibly rate. Ultimately if they add value and behave well they might carve out a market - but anything in the software space right now is a gamble.
ricardobeat 25d ago
> If I'm happy with the weights you've given me, and I'm not using your compute for inference and not wanting or needing any updates off you, why should you continue getting money off me and my customers? What do you mean by "continue" if you haven't paid anything yet at that point?
wredcoll 25d ago
> These local models are like old school software. They're producing the weights, and then giving them to people. If I'm happy with the weights you've given me, and I'm not using your compute for inference and not wanting or needing any updates off you, why should you continue getting money off me and my customers? You are, presumably, making copies of their software for your customers. So I guess the real question here is, should copyright exist? For software?
akoboldfrying 25d ago
> If I'm happy with the weights you've given me, and I'm not using your compute for inference and not wanting or needing any updates off you, why should you continue getting money off me and my customers? Because that's the contract you agreed to? If you don't like the contract they offer, don't take it. You can choose something else. It's really as simple as that.

by 1dom 25d ago

donavanm 25d ago

> why should you continue getting money off me and my customers? Welcome to the concept of fair market value. Less snarkily you're conflating the concepts of price and cost; theyre not the same thing and theyre not the same for you or the seller.

Muromec 25d ago
How does piracy of digital content and software factor into this concept?

handfuloflight 25d ago

How is it not obvious and fair that they are asking you to pay them when you see success (defined as >100K MAU)? How more aligned can you and them be besides this?

Muromec 25d ago
When I buy I chair I don't pay a share of my income to the furniture shop when I get rich. I would buy another chair at some point too, maybe fancier one (or the same). Because chairs are commodity. I do however pay taxes to the government based on my income because it keeps doing ongoing maintenance on everything. Everyone wants to be paid forever for something they produced once is some kind of a mind virus. Make me a better chair and maybe I will buy it, but don't expect to become a trillion dollar company. It's deeply unfair to everyone who wants to be a trillion dollar company of course. What is really funny to me -- the ones that do make it to collect the rent indefinitely also decrease their own taxes paid to the government AND also decrease the amount of contribution to society by making less and shittier stuff.
- handfuloflight 25d ago
  Analogy doesn't apply to this case, as you are paying for the chair upfront but not paying for the model weights upfront.
  - Muromec 25d ago
    I'm also not downloading a chair, because why would it?
    - handfuloflight 25d ago
      Exactly, so your analogy is useless.
  - 1dom 25d ago
    The only reason my chair manufacturer would be entitled to the proceeds of my success whilst I was in their chair is if I hadn't already paid them for the work they put into making the chair for me. Even then, why would my success with their product have anything to do with how much they can charge me for their labour? What other things work like that outside of the modern tech world? Seriously, look around you, pick a thing, imagine a world where the price you paid for that thing hinged on your personal individual success with that thing. edit: to clarify, my point is why can't we pay for the model weights up front for offline models? Why would we continue paying for things we don't want/need anymore, like updates for offline software that does it's job fine?

chadash 25d ago

> If I'm happy with the weights you've given me, and I'm not using your compute for inference and not wanting or needing any updates off you, why should you continue getting money off me and my customers? I definitely understand the appeal of the desire to “buy it once”, but I think there are a few issues: - almost no software is static. Look at a package like python Requests and even though it does the simplest thing and has barely changed from a user perspective, it gets updated all the time. This is true for most software. This is doubly true for something like local AI models where both the software and the hardware are changing constantly. Subscriptions motivate sellers to keep their software up to date. - If I’m an app developer, the idea that I can try something out for $X/month is very appealing versus making an upfront investment of (let’s say) $X*20. This is doubly true for something like local models where I will almost certainly want something new when the models improve. - To add to the first point, I work at a startup. No one asks questions when I want $20/month licenses. But let’s say I want something that’s gonna be in the 5 figure range annually. If I go to my CFO and ask for $50k upfront and then we implement something and the project fails, I look like an idiot. If I ask for $2000/mo budget for something and then we try it for two months and it fails, no one cares. Subscriptions are just safer in this sense.

TechSquidTV 25d ago
LLMs are static though.
- deleted 25d ago
  [deleted]
- sejje 25d ago
  In the way that, say, Garmin Maps are static, I agree.
  - Caracas288 25d ago
    Very much like map CD-rom updates, I think a lot of people wouldn't mind paying per-update for these models, and would understand the implications. That is, if there weren't so many open models available.

Aurornis 25d ago

> If I'm happy with the weights you've given me, and I'm not using your compute for inference and not wanting or needing any updates off you, why should you continue getting money off me and my customers? Because they own the IP and they get to decide the terms of how it’s licensed. This is like a company taking open source software, saying they like the code the community has given them, and asking why they should continue having to respect the terms of the license after downloading the code. The availability of the software (or models) does not equal a free license to use as you please. A license allowing 100K devices for free is very generous. The businesses selling more than 100K units of anything will be significant operations. It’s fair that they’re asked to contribute financially.

sejje 25d ago
He's not arguing about their right to license it how they please. He's arguing that someone ought to choose to do it another way. You made up a position to argue against.
- Aurornis 25d ago
  No, you’re arguing against the first part of my comment without reading the whole thing where I addressed the value proposition. A 100K free device license is a generous gift to small companies. Past 100K, it’s more than fair to ask that companies contribute. That’s a significant operation at that point and the model has obviously provided value. If the model doesn’t provide any value to a >100K device company then they should train their own or not use it. I could see how people unfamiliar with per-device or per-unit licensing fees would be confused, but this is a common business model. Scaling payments with the customer’s business success is one of the more fair ways to align vendor and customer while also providing a nice way to give freely to smaller businesses like this. It’s a good thing. It’s silly that a company giving away a license for 100K devices, which covers small and medium hardware operations, is being criticized for this of all things.
serf 25d ago
>Because they own the IP and they get to decide the terms of how it’s licensed. how'd that work out for the rest of IP owners that had their stuff used as training data for use in model creation? was the material they trained on produced in-house?

embedding-shape 25d ago

How would a model where you pay per each model/weight update feel like? More similar to traditional software, where you'd get the current version, maybe even free/rebated version upgrade to the next, but then have to do another purchase to get the latest version? Or something similar to that? Feels like it'd be more aligned with how the business and users would produce and use it, it'd be something like: "We've done a bunch of research and output, here is the thing, you can buy it, and we'll work on the next, then you can pay again for the next if you'd like".

1dom 25d ago
This seems like common sense. I guess it's not seen as common sense any more because the assumption is that all software is going to be using someone else's compute, or be connected to the internet and therefore require regular updates. If neither of those are true, a subscription or recurring license or similar regular fee just feels like greed/robbery.

DrScientist 25d ago

As far as I can see there is no clear pricing once you go beyond the free tier - it's contact sales. This is actually a classic enterprise software approach - as there are no fixed per unit production costs to cover, the pricing is very elastic. ie each license is probably a negotiation - if you see your app for a one off fee then they want a one-off cut - if you sell a subscription they may want a cut of that instead. Obviously the risk is if you bake it in and your app becomes successful they may want a larger cut than you can afford, but if they don't negotiate in good faith they won't last very long.

sureMan6 25d ago
What's worrying for them is nothing they're doing is impossible to be recreated, if you bake it in and you don't want to pay rent you can fine tune your own model
- DrScientist 24d ago
  Sure. That's a problem with the whole AI space - it's eating itself at a incredibly rate. Ultimately if they add value and behave well they might carve out a market - but anything in the software space right now is a gamble.

ricardobeat 25d ago

wredcoll 25d ago

> These local models are like old school software. They're producing the weights, and then giving them to people. If I'm happy with the weights you've given me, and I'm not using your compute for inference and not wanting or needing any updates off you, why should you continue getting money off me and my customers? You are, presumably, making copies of their software for your customers. So I guess the real question here is, should copyright exist? For software?

akoboldfrying 25d ago

> If I'm happy with the weights you've given me, and I'm not using your compute for inference and not wanting or needing any updates off you, why should you continue getting money off me and my customers? Because that's the contract you agreed to? If you don't like the contract they offer, don't take it. You can choose something else. It's really as simple as that.