alt Hacker NewsI understand the sticklers who are annoyed at people using open weight and open source interchangeably, but it misses some nuance. A common refrain I see is "it's like saying a shareware app is open source!" - that's just wrong.
Open source means you can modify, rebuild, and re-distribute the code and the resulting app. Open weights you can do two of those things - you can modify and re-distributed. They can't be re-built, since you're missing the original training data - but they are a form of open that exists somewhere between open source and closed source. Derivative works are allowed, but the source material isn't available.
I don't see people complaining about creative commons licensed images or audio being "not real open source", and open weight models seem about the same as that to me.
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> I don't see people complaining about creative commons licensed images or audio being "not real open source", and open weight models seem about the same as that to me.
Creative Commons licenses are a spectrum from CC BY to CC BY-NC-ND. All six licenses offer different freedoms and requirements about the work licensed.
As I said in another comment, Open meant that you can buy an interface to the thing you are interested in. Nothing like Open Source or Free Software of today, and Open Weights lean to the former than the latter, this is what rubs the people the wrong way (incl. me).
A better term would be weights-available. Do not create false assumptions about so-called openness of a model, and is akin to sharing an object file which you can compile into something but its source is not available to start from scratch.
Nuances matter, that's true, but the packaging of the facts also matter. A good example is, again, XKCD's comic titled Free [0]. Open weights are open as the open of 2000s commercial software, maybe with a free SDK, but the labeling is deceiving on purpose.
I disagree. Open source is when the source is open. Free software is when you are free to make modifications and redistribute.
Edit: as bayindirh noted, according to OSI's definition, I am completely incorrect about redistribution of modifications.