When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Heres how it works.

What is open source?

This means the software is free to use, change and share with others.

Image saying Open Source

It’s all about open collaboration so that anyone can contribute.

This encourages people to work together and keep improving the products.

This concept started in the early 1950s, and has continued to produce important work for the world.

Stable diffusion

But its not just images and video.

Theres also a sea of open source AI utilities which are powering apps far from the news headlines.

For example, theOllamaplatform, which is powering a growing percentage of AI use on users computers.

Hugging Face

That, and an army of open-source AI researchers in universities and colleges across the world.

Never underestimate the power of the crowd.

However, not all open-source work is done at the kitchen table level.

Genmo Mochi-1

Its a technical but important distinction to preserve the purity of the open-source method.

Open should mean nothing is locked away, which is not the case with LlaMa models at the moment.

Sometimes open becomes closed

At this point Im going to add a big ugly caveat.

Arrow

The biggest example, of course, is OpenAI.

Then quietly switched to aprofit based entitylast month.

Pretty sneaky, Mr Altman.

Arrow

The true benefit of open source is in collaboration and improvements made by the community.

One example of this came from Meta opening Llama.

This enabled languages to be saved in countries that could never afford to build their own models.

Apple 13" MacBook Air (M3,…

We saw a prime example of the value of open source withGenmo’s Mochi-1AI video model earlier this week.

This is state-of-the-art and comparable to leaders like Runway and Luma Labs Dream Machine.

More from Tom’s Guide

Lenovo Chromebook Duet 3…

ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED Laptop…

ASUS

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 2023

Best Buy

Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 3

Apple MacBook Pro (2023) 14.2…

P.C. Richard & Son

Apple 2023 MacBook Pro Laptop…

Apple 13" MacBook Air (M3,…

ASUS Zenbook S 13 OLED…

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 2023

DeepSeek R1 illustrations

ChatGPT search interface

iPhone 16 Pro Max, Galaxy S25 Ultra and Pixel 9 Pro

ChatGPT generated image

Gemini gif

A person holding a Nintendo Switch 2 playing Mario Kart World

2025 Rivian R1S Tri-Motor test drive review.

Samsung S95F OLED TV

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition on a garden table