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MiniMax M2.7 Is Now Open Source

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Re: MiniMax M2.7 Is Now Open Source

#31

Post by rvz »

steveharing1 wrote: post #3

Nvidia is providing free API to try Minimax M2.7

With limits.

"free" does not mean what you think it means.

To Downvoters: I hope you have read the NVIDIA API Trial Terms of Service [0] before signing up. It clearly has restrictions and limitations.

From [0]:

> Unless you purchase a Subscription from NVIDIA or a Service Provider (as applicable), you may only use the API Service for internal testing and evaluation purposes, not in production. The terms and conditions of your Subscription will govern your production use of the API Service.

[0] https://assets.ngc.nvidia.com/products/api-catalog/legal/NVI...

Re: MiniMax M2.7 Is Now Open Source

#32

Post by zozbot234 »

MarsIronPI wrote: post #28
simonw wrote: post #12

Absolutely not "open source" - here's the license: https://huggingface.co/MiniMaxAI/MiniMax-M2.7/blob/main/LICE... > Non-commercial use permitted based on MIT-style terms; commercial use requires prior written authorization. And calling the non-commercial usage "MIT-style terms" is a stretch - they come with a bunch of extra restrictions about prohibited uses. It's open weights, not open source.

Even the MIT-licensed weights are just that: open weights. Let's not call the weights "source", because they're emphatically not. I can't retrain Qwen from the ground up with different pre-training algorithms, for example.

Model weights are source because they are "the preferred form for modification", e.g. you can use them for fine-tuning. Training a new model from raw data (1) gets you something very different from the original and (2) is computationally unfeasible for most, compared to simpler fine tuning.

Re: MiniMax M2.7 Is Now Open Source

#33

Post by littlestymaar »

simonw wrote: post #12

Absolutely not "open source" - here's the license: https://huggingface.co/MiniMaxAI/MiniMax-M2.7/blob/main/LICE... > Non-commercial use permitted based on MIT-style terms; commercial use requires prior written authorization. And calling the non-commercial usage "MIT-style terms" is a stretch - they come with a bunch of extra restrictions about prohibited uses. It's open weights, not open source.

I've yet to see a convincing explanation of what make such a “license” legally bounding in the first place.

There's no copyright on model weights themselves (because they are produced purely mechanically without involving human creativity, the same way there's no copyright on compiled artifacts of a piece of software or an h264 encoded movie file). For software and movies the copyright cover the source material, not the resulting binary, and for LLMs the source material can also be protected by copyright. The problem, is that LLM makers don't own most of the copyright on the source material and worse they claim the training process is transformative enough to erase the copyright of the source material so even the part of the training data for which they own copyright couldn't extend their copyright protection to the weights.

It's very likely that these licenses are entirely devoid of legal value (and I don't think Meta engaged in any legal actions (not even a DMCA takedown) on any of the bazillions llama finetunes violating the llama license on huggingface).

Re: MiniMax M2.7 Is Now Open Source

#34

Post by hulk-konen »

girvo wrote: post #18
wg0 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about this: https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/model-studio/coding-pla... How does it compare to z.ai GLM?

I am! GLM-5 (which is all I have access to on it, not the newer GLM-5.1) is slightly better for the coding tasks I'm using them for, in terms of being more accurate slightly more often. Both are very good, and very close to one another in practice Qwen3.5-plus is also quite excellent: all of these models feel pretty similar to Sonnet 4.5 in practice, though GLM-5 can have "Opus" like reasoning through surprisingly lo…

I think GLM 5.1 is a step above M2.7 and Qwen 3.6. I’ve used it to do some planning when I ran out of Opus usage, and it’s done ok job. Wouldn’t trust it with some more difficult data shape edits etc., but it’s a nice option to have!

Composer 2, M2.7, and Qwen 3.6 are all capable to execute those plans just fine.

Re: MiniMax M2.7 Is Now Open Source

#35

Post by adrian_b »

ctdinjeu5 wrote: post #5
steveharing1 wrote: post #3

Nvidia is providing free API to try Minimax M2.7

For those who like open source so much they want to use a provider

While I would not use an external provider, that may be a rational choice for some.

The most important advantage of using open weights models is to have perfectly predictable performances and costs in the future. When you can run the model on your own hardware you are protected from price increases, subscription limits decreases or quality reductions of the provided models, like it has already happened for the users of Claude Code.

The disadvantage is that if you also want a high speed, you need more expensive hardware. You may defer the cost of buying better hardware, if you use an external provider for now, but you keep in reserve the possibility of hosting yourself the models that you are using, if anything makes the external providers worse.

Re: MiniMax M2.7 Is Now Open Source

#36

Post by adrian_b »

anonym29 wrote: post #11

In addition to this conversation already having been started at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47735348 yesterday, MiniMax M2.7 is not open source. The open weights have been released, which is definitely good and follows some of the spirit of open source, but isn't the same thing.

While an open-source model is obviously preferable to an open-weights model, the difference between the two is much less important than the difference between an open-weights model and a proprietary model.

There are much more people who are interested only in doing model inference, for which an open-weights model is sufficient to avoid the uncertainties and costs associated with a subscription, and for enabling them to make and use better model harnesses than those offered commercially (better by being more suitable for their specific needs), than people who also want to do model training, for which an open-source model would be needed.

Re: MiniMax M2.7 Is Now Open Source

#37

Post by girvo »

zozbot234 wrote: post #29
girvo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am! GLM-5 (which is all I have access to on it, not the newer GLM-5.1) is slightly better for the coding tasks I'm using them for, in terms of being more accurate slightly more often. Both are very good, and very close to one another in practice Qwen3.5-plus is also quite excellent: all of these models feel pretty similar to Sonnet 4.5 in practice, though GLM-5 can have "Opus" like reasoning through surprisingly lo…

Qwen 3.5 is great and openly available, but it seems that Qwen 3.6 will only release smaller models (TBD, but the ~300B size seems to be excluded already).

Yeah I saw. Such a shame, I’m playing with a Q4 version of 3.5 122B-A10B on my Asus GX10, it’s kind of nuts how great a model you can run at home (with limitations of course)

Re: MiniMax M2.7 Is Now Open Source

#38

Post by anonym29 »

adrian_b wrote: post #36
anonym29 wrote: post #11

In addition to this conversation already having been started at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47735348 yesterday, MiniMax M2.7 is not open source. The open weights have been released, which is definitely good and follows some of the spirit of open source, but isn't the same thing.

While an open-source model is obviously preferable to an open-weights model, the difference between the two is much less important than the difference between an open-weights model and a proprietary model. There are much more people who are interested only in doing model inference, for which an open-weights model is sufficient to avoid the uncertainties and costs associated with a subscription, and for enabling them…

Absolutely - I'm one of these types of people who just want local inference myself. I have a Strix Halo rig and I'm thrilled to have Minimax M2.7 weights to run locally. Like I said, this is still an unambiguously good thing, and follows some of the spirit of open source.

Just know that Minimax M2.7 is offered with a noncommercial license. If you use it for commercial purposes, you may be on the hook, liability-wise.

Re: MiniMax M2.7 Is Now Open Source

#39

Post by MarsIronPI »

zozbot234 wrote: post #32
MarsIronPI wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the MIT-licensed weights are just that: open weights. Let's not call the weights "source", because they're emphatically not. I can't retrain Qwen from the ground up with different pre-training algorithms, for example.

Model weights are source because they are "the preferred form for modification", e.g. you can use them for fine-tuning. Training a new model from raw data (1) gets you something very different from the original and (2) is computationally unfeasible for most, compared to simpler fine tuning.

I disagree. Fine-tuning, while useful, feels more like patching executables than source code. Besides, just because most people don't compile e.g. Android for themselves doesn't mean that Android should only be distributed in binary form.
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