Why Mark Zuckerberg wants to redefine open source so badly

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No, not in the way GP wrote. You're not allowed to have your license discriminate between users, so you'd have to sell your software to everyone, not just big companies.

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PostgreSQL is not built on top of the data you host in your db. It's not a valid comparison.

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Open source software doesn't, by definition, place restrictions on usage.

The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor.

Clauses like "you can use this software freely except in specific circumstances" fly against that. Open source licenses usually have very little to say about what the software should be used for, and usually just as an affirmation that you can use the software for whatever you want.

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Open source software can be sold at different prices to different customers, and still remain open source. Open source software can also be sold only to certain types of customers, and still remain open source. Who the developer decides to sell or distribute the software to, and at what price, is unrelated to how the software is licensed.

However, because the Open Source Definition prohibits open source software licenses from discriminating against "any person or group of persons", the customers who buy open source software cannot be restricted from reselling or redistributing the software to any other individual or organization.

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Right, which means that you practically cannot give open source software for free to non-corporations while selling it to corporations while still being fully open source, as the corporations can simply get it for free from any non-corporation.

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If you are referring to licenses that prohibit commercial use or prevent certain types of users from using the software, those licenses are not open source because they "discriminate against any person or group of persons".

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Exactly!

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But at least that way they get to power trip

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I appreciate the clarification, thank you!

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To note is that this definition was discussed for awhile with many engineers in the AI field, including from Meta.

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Software licenses that "discriminate against any person or group of persons" or "restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor" are not open source. Llama's license doesn't just restrict Llama from being used by companies with "700 million monthly active users", it also restricts Llama from being used to "create, train, fine tune, or otherwise improve an AI model" or being used for military use (although Meta made an exception for the US military). Therefore, Llama is not open source.

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The OSI's definition actually tackles this pretty well:

Sufficient information as to the source of the data so that one could potentially go out and to retrieve it, and recreate the model, is sufficient to fall within the OSAI definition.

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What are we going to do with the colonisers?

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The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources

So as I understand it, under the OSI definition of the word, anything distributed under a copyleft licence would not be open source.

So all software with GNU GPL, for example.

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This is essentially what Llama does, no? The reason they are attempting a clarification is because they would be subject to different regulations depending on whether or not it's open source.

If they open source everything they legally can, then do they qualify as "open source" for legal purposes? The difference can be tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars in the EU according to Meta.

So a clarification on this issue, I think, is not asking for so much. Hate Facebook as much as the next guy but this is like 5 minute hate material

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Yes, but that model would never compete with the models that use copyrighted data.

There is a unfathomably large ocean of copyrighted data that goes into the modern LLMs. From scraping the internet to transcripts of movies and TV shows to tens of thousands of novels, etc.

That's the reason they are useful. If it weren't for that data, it would be a novelty.

So do we want public access to AI or not? How do we wanna do it? Zuck's quote from article "our legal framework isn't equipped for this new generation of AI" I think has truth to it

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That’s not what his phrase meant.

If you have the OSI-approved license, you are open source. If you don't, then you have some other kind of license.

What he’s saying is that there’s no partially open source license. You’re either using a OSI-approved license, to which you can say your software is open source, or you don’t. It doesn’t matter that your software has 90% of the terms of an open source license, but you restrict it in situation X (“corporations can’t use it without paying me”), in that case it simply isn’t open source, it’s another made up license.

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expend, reload, repeat

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That's incorrect. GPL licenses are open source.

The GPL does not restrict anyone from selling GPL-licensed software as a component of an aggregate software distribution.

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If they open source everything they legally can, then do they qualify as "open source" for legal purposes?

No, definitely not! Open source is a binary attribute. If your product is partially open source, it's not open source, only the parts you open sourced.

So Llama is not open source, even if some parts are.

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Why Mark Zuckerberg wants to redefine open source so badly