They do say "open-weight", which is I think still very misleading in this context. Open-weight sounds like it should be the same as open-source, just for weights instead of the full source (for example, training data and the code used to generate the weights may not be released). This isn't really "open" in any meaningful sense.
This is why I prefer the term "weights available" just like "source available". It makes it clear that you can get your hands on the copy, you could run this exact thing locally if they go out of business, etc. but it is definitely not open in the OSS sense.
The fact that I can downloaded it and run it myself is a pretty meaningful amount of openness to me. I can easily ignore their bogus claims about what I'm allowed to do with it due to their distribution model. I can't necessarily do the same with a propriety service, as they can cut me off if the way I use the output makes them sad :(
> I can easily ignore their bogus claims about what I'm allowed to do with it due to their distribution model.
If you're talking about exclusively personally use, sure. If you're talking about a business setting in a jurisdiction that Mistral can sue in, not so much.
Being able to use it in a business setting is a pretty darn important part of what Open Source has always meant (it's why it exists as a term at all).
> If you're talking about a business setting in a jurisdiction that Mistral can sue in, not so much.
I'm reminded of the Japanese concept called Sosumi :)
> Being able to use it in a business setting is a pretty darn important part of what Open Source has always meant (it's why it exists as a term at all).
I'm quite familiar with the history of that term, but neither I nor Mistral used it. None of their models have been open source; they have been open weight. You can argue that they are actually "weight available" given the terms they write next to the download link, but since there has been no ruling on whether weights themselves are covered by copyright (and I think that would be terribly bogus if they are), I simply choose not to care what they write in their "terms of use".
The inference engine that I use to run open weight language models is fully free software. The model itself isn't really software in the traditional sense. So calling it ____ware seems inaccurate.
The interpreter is free software. The model is freeware distributed as a binary blob. Code vs. Data is a matter of perspective, but with large neural nets, more than anywhere, it makes no sense to pretend they're plain data. All the computational complexity is in the weights, they're very much code compiled for an unusual architecture (the inference engine).
Regardless of the distinction of code vs data, putting a limit to the number of inferences you can run on a model is essentially the same as using a copyright license on a PNG to limit the number of times you can "run" the PNG with a photo viewer. Is that enforceable? Does it matter? Does the copyright extend to music that my photo viewer generates when I open the image? IANAL but imo, no.
