Comment by ordersofmag

So is a zip file of source code. There is no 'compilation process'. Model training isn't a fixed end point. You start with random weights. You train. The weights get better. You do this iteratively. At some point you say 'good enough' and release. People doing further training would start with those weights and further iterate. Demanding the original training data and training process would be equivalent to demanding a completely replay-able sequence of editing steps starting with a blank text file and allowing you to replay ever edit that led the original author to the released source code.

Now there are reasons you might want to know about the training data when you wouldn't care about the authoring process used by a traditional open-source process. And these get at the reason LLM's are different than traditional software and so maybe our existing definitions of what 'open-source' means aren't a good match for LLM's. Of course there is software associated with LLM's (beyond the weight) -- defining the structure of the particular neural net those weights fit into. In every open-weights model that I'm aware of that software is open source (though trivial).