Why wouldn't everyone be hot on open models? Security implications? First time I have heard someone lightly opposing the idea of fully open models.

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xnorswap a day ago | parent | next [-]

I'm not opposed to open models at all, I'm just slightly sceptical on how much some people push their use compared to the value we get out of a dirt cheap subscription.

Propriety models are clearly subsidised by enterprise API contracts, so it makes sense to milk that for all its worth, provided one steers clear of any lock in so the option to switch is always there.

Jumping to spending time managing and self-hosting open models is a nice ideal but I think it's a distraction to jump on that train without proven benefits given the value that other plans deliver.

I don't mean I'm against the idea of open models, they were especially instrumental in Anthropic backing down from the "Fable only initially available 2 weeks" plan, which got extended up until Fable was over-taken by Opus in general usefulness.

It's my view that any company sized appropriately for Teams plan should be milking it for all its worth while it still exists, and it is a waste to lose that opportunity by jumping on open models too early.

If you're a larger enterprise then it would be a very different story, you'd already be paying more forced onto API pricing and would likely have the capacity to have a team look at open models without impacting delivery.

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rgbrenner a day ago | parent [-]

there is a middle ground between proprietary models and self-hosting: Fireworks, et al. Popular models like DeepSeek have a couple dozen providers on openrouter.

	▲	xnorswap a day ago \| parent [-]
		There is, but it also has an additional trust layer on top, where you have to trust you're getting back responses from the models you're being sold and aren't being artificially quantised or stealthily redirected to cheaper models. I trust ( although some don't ), Anthropic not to be doing that. I don't trust intermediate providers so much. If you're self-hosting then at least you know exactly what is running and get privacy on top. Likewise you lose privacy of local hosting, and if it emerged that a provider was training on data they shouldn't be, would you have the necessary legal recourse, that you would going direct to the major model providers?

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ajb a day ago | parent | prev [-]

There's a lot of lobbying against open models on the grounds of a) China and b) open models mean we won't be able to prevent a hard takeoff.