It's a great observation. People simply want their free stuff.
The potential challenge arises in the future. Today's models will probably look weak compared to models we'll have in 1, 3 or 10 years which means that today's models will likely be irrelevant in years hence. Every competitive "open" model today is tied closely to a controlling organization weather it's Meta, Mistral.AI, TII, 01.AI, etc.
If they simply choose not to publish the next iteration of their model and follow OpenAI's path that's the end of the line.
A truly open model could have some life beyond that of its original developer/organization. Of course it would still take great talent, updated datasets, and serious access to compute to keep a model moving forward and developing but if this is done in the "open" community then we'd have some guarantee for the future.
Imagine if Linux was actually owned by a for-profit corporation and they could simply choose not to release a future version AND it was not possible for another organization to fork and carry on "open" Linux?
The potential challenge arises in the future. Today's models will probably look weak compared to models we'll have in 1, 3 or 10 years which means that today's models will likely be irrelevant in years hence. Every competitive "open" model today is tied closely to a controlling organization weather it's Meta, Mistral.AI, TII, 01.AI, etc.
If they simply choose not to publish the next iteration of their model and follow OpenAI's path that's the end of the line.
A truly open model could have some life beyond that of its original developer/organization. Of course it would still take great talent, updated datasets, and serious access to compute to keep a model moving forward and developing but if this is done in the "open" community then we'd have some guarantee for the future.
Imagine if Linux was actually owned by a for-profit corporation and they could simply choose not to release a future version AND it was not possible for another organization to fork and carry on "open" Linux?