Let’s stop using terms like open source falsely. The model isn’t open source, it is open weights. It’s good that the license for the weights is Apache, but for this model to be “truly open” they must release training data and source code under an OSI approved license. Otherwise it’s just misleading marketing. So far it seems like Snowflake will release some blog posts and “cookbooks”, whatever that means, but not act…
What’s the problem? This is what it says on their repo home page. ————— Truly Open: Apache 2.0 license provides ungated access to weights and code. In addition, we are also open sourcing all of our data recipes and research insights.
https://github.com/Snowflake-Labs/snowflake-arctic/tree/main
https://huggingface.co/Snowflake/snowflake-arctic-base
https://huggingface.co/Snowflake/snowflake-arctic-instruct
To put it another way, when they share the weights for the model, that's like sharing the compiled output for some software - like releasing an executable instead of the source code that can produce the executable. They aren't sharing the things you need to produce the weights (the training code, training data, any preprocessing code, etc). Without those inputs you actually cannot even audit or verify how the model works. The team making the model might bias the model in all sorts of ways without your knowledge.