open source

Open source describes software released under a licence that lets anyone use, study, modify and share it. The approach underpins much of the modern internet, and in AI it has become a powerful counterweight to closed, cloud-only systems.

In the AI world the term is used loosely. Truly open projects publish everything — code, and sometimes training data and methods — while many “open” model releases are more precisely open-weight: you get the model to run, but not the full recipe behind it. The distinction matters when you care about transparency or reproducibility.

Either way, openly available models and tools give individuals and small businesses real independence: the ability to run AI on their own terms, inspect how it works, and avoid being locked into a single provider.