Comment by hobofan
5 hours ago
It's the same distinction as "open source" vs "source available" (when speaking about source code). It's not that widely in use because few people in the LLM space are diligent enough with IP to make the distinction, but the concept is easily transferable.
I think the problem with this "open weights" thing is that it doesn't map well at all with "open source".
If you think about it the actual mapping is more like:
- closed weights -> closed-source web service (e.g. gmail)
- open weights -> closed-source but you get the binaries (e.g. Minecraft)
- Actually open model (with training data, training pipeline etc.) -> open source
True, they don't own the word open. Words mean what people agree they mean, and insisting on more expansive definitions of open got the ecosystem from restrictive licenses in the llama 2 and 3 days to most noteworthy models being MIT, Apache, or OpenMDW (permissive but specifically for model weights).