Training is really really expensive and open models are not getting funded by VCs. Distillation also doesn’t improve performance. Until training gets exponentially cheaper so that you can do it for a few hundred grand to train a competitive model, open models are labs trying to flood the market to get market share / undercut more successful labs, not a sustainable strategy that will extend indefinitely necessarily. It’s like claiming Uber and DoorDash are fantastic because their prices are so low - once they eat the market the prices become higher than ever.

Sure, but once they release an open model, it's open forever. You can download it, share it with friends, make a torrent, whatever. So in this sense every open model is a gift to the commons.

It's not quite like Uber. It's more like... well... imagine there are two computer operating systems, Gray and Teal. Gray is always slightly better, but it costs $50/user/month for a license. Teal is free. Eventually, when both happen to be in version 9.0, Teal puts Gray out of business. Starting from version 10.0, Teal starts charging $100/user/month from a license. But nothing's stopping you from sticking with 9.0, which remains free forever.

Perhaps what's "sustainable" is not clear, given that Gray was eventually dominated by Teal? In any case, versions 1.0-9.0 were, effectively, gifted to the public. We can appreciate (and even disapprove of) that commercial strategy while benefitting from its fruits.