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Meta made its Llama 2 AI model open-source because 'Zuck has balls,' a former top Facebook engineer says
(www.businessinsider.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
It probably has more to do with the fuck up they did with accidentally creating a torrent for the original model's weights allowing them to spread across the internet. Doesn't really take "balls" to open source it after that and make it look like it was intentional. Still good that they did however rather than trying to use legal intimidation on anyone who used the leaked models.
It was already available for non-commercial use. The difference was that you had to submit a form and it was a slow roll-out.
IIRC you could apply as a credentialed academic researcher but not as a member of the general public, but i could be wrong about that.
They didn't check credentials, but it was indeed for research purposes. Folks were getting access if they said they were a student or researcher.