The highly respected Open Source Initiative, which has a reputation for being one of the most prominent stewards of open-source software, has finally come up with an official definition on what makes artificial intelligence models open or not.
The Open Source Initiative has defined what information AI providers must disclose in order to be truly open source.
In CEO and Co-Founder of Chainguard, Dan Lorenc’s keynote “Stop Peeing in the Pool!” he explained how “fauxpen source” licenses are effectively contaminating the world of open source and what that will mean for the future of development. He specifically used the capitalization of Open Source as he walked us through the official definition of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) from 1998.
Mark Surman, president of the Mozilla Foundation, joins Forbes Talks to discuss the importance of open-source AI. Surman explains why consumers should care about the AI they’re using, highlighting the risks of closed-source AI systems. Surman also delves into privacy implications and shares insights into companies prioritizing user privacy in their AI practices.
The process of defining Open Source AI exists in an environment of unprecedented complexity but of utmost importance. I want to provide a short background on why the Open Source Initiative (OSI) is doing this, how the work is being done, and why global community—working in a spirit of collaboration—has confidence that issuing the Open Source AI Definition v.1.0 is the correct and most prudent next step in a process to help the open source community make a big leap forward in AI innovation for the good of everyone who relies on the meaning of the term.
This brings me to the Open Source AI Definition (OSAID), an effort organized by OSI over the past two years, which I have participated in alongside others from both traditional open source backgrounds and AI experts. It is often said that naming things is the hardest problem in software engineering, but in this case we started with a name, “Open Source AI,” and set out to define it. As it turns out, that’s just as hard. This difficult work can also appear contentious because people have strong opinions, but that’s nothing new for open source software (or people).
The Open Source Initiative’s Release Candidate 1 identifies four categories of data and demands sharing of data, source code and model parameters.
The OSI and allies are a step closer to an open-source artificial intelligence definition, and purists aren’t the only ones unhappy.
As Stefano Maffulli, executive director of the OSI, said at the time: “We are delighted to welcome Elastic back into the Open Source ecosystem…
For the past four years, Elastic has given customers a choice between its proprietary Elastic license or the SSPL (server side public license), which was created by MongoDB and subsequently failed to get approved as “open source” by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), the stewards of the official open source definition.
The Open Source Initiative has been working on defining open source AI for the past two years, and they should release their definition in November,” Columbro said. “OSI’s approach will focus on the principles, providing a binary definition of open source AI — either it is or it isn’t.
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) released a near-final definition of open source AI that will free up the broad community of AI developers to create a flourishing movement for AI innovation, much like with the creation of the internet itself.
