What You Need to Know About Open Source AI Models

A clear guide to understanding and benefiting from open source AI

It used to be easy to work with open source technology. The model had clear rules: use the software per license guidelines if you have the skills and time but pay for managed services. AI changed all that. You get a model but not necessarily all the details that led to making that model.

As most insiders know, the real trick to making money from AI is to use it with your own data or to tweak it for a specific purpose, without restrictions imposed by closed source providers. Open source AI does not make it easy to do this — at least, till recently. One problem is that the real tricks that proprietary AI labs use were not disclosed in detail.

DeepSeek brought the focus back on Open Source this January when they open sourced their R-1 reasoning model and provided detailed instructions on their training process in their paper on R-1. They have set a new standard for open source models.

Let’s start with the basics.

The Definitions

According to Merriam-Webster, open-source software is software whose source code is freely available for modification and redistribution.

Let’s turn to the definition of open source AI.

However, defining what constitutes “open source” in AI is controversial. Unlike traditional open-source software, where the concept is well-defined, AI models are far…