The struggle between open source and proprietary software is well understood. But the tensions permeating software circles for decades have shuffled i

What does ‘open source AI’ mean, anyway?

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2024-06-24 11:00:03

The struggle between open source and proprietary software is well understood. But the tensions permeating software circles for decades have shuffled into the artificial intelligence space, in part because no one can agree on what “open source” really means in the context of AI.

The New York Times recently published a gushing appraisal of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, noting how his “open source AI” embrace had made him popular once more in Silicon Valley. By most estimations, however, Meta’s Llama-branded large language models aren’t really open source, which highlights the crux of the debate.

It’s this challenge that the Open Source Initiative (OSI) is trying to address, led by executive director Stefano Maffulli (pictured above), through conferences, workshops, panels, webinars, reports and more.

The OSI has been a steward of the Open Source Definition (OSD) for more than a quarter of a century, setting out how the term “open source” can, or should, be applied to software. A license that meets this definition can legitimately be deemed “open source,” though it recognizes a spectrum of licenses ranging from extremely permissive to not quite so permissive.