OMI believes that "the right way to build these AI models is with open licenses," as the organisation states. Such licenses "allow creatives and businesses to build on each other's work, facilitate research, and create new products and services without restrictive licensing constraints."
The community initiative "came about over the summer to help advance open-source AI models" and is now integrating with the Linux Foundation to further its mission.
As part of this partnership, the OMI will establish a governance framework and working groups, create shared standards to enhance model interoperability and metadata practices, develop a transparent dataset for training and captioning, complete an alpha test model for targeted red teaming, and release an alpha version of a new model with fine-tuning scripts by the end of 2024.
The initiative was formed in response to several recent decisions by creators of popular open-source models to alter their licensing terms. Stability AI Ltd.'s recent licensing change for its image-generation model Stable Diffusion 3 (SD3) was highlighted. Previously free and open, SD3 now features a monthly fee structure and usage limitations and drew criticism for its lack of clarity.
The OMI seeks to remove barriers to enterprise adoption by focusing on training and developing AI models with "irrevocable open licenses without deletion clauses or recurring costs for access," as the Linux Foundation states.
InfoWorld also highlights "the unavailability of source code and the license restrictions from LLM providers such as Meta, Mistral, and Anthropic," which complicates using their 'open source' models.
Meta, for example, allows royalty-free use of its Llama models but does not provide the source code. Everest Group's AI practice leader, Suseel Menon, points out that Meta's clause requiring a license for products or services with over 700 million monthly active users further questions the open-source nature of Llama models.
Analysts have mixed reactions to the OMI's objectives. Hyoun Park, chief analyst at Amalgam Insights, believes the OMI will foster more predictable and consistent standards for open-source models, enhancing their interoperability.