Sure, I don't disagree. I fully understand the open-weights folks looking for a word to communicate their approach and its benefits, and I support them in doing so. It's just a shame they picked this one in - and that's giving folks a lot of benefit of the doubt - a snap judgement.

> Maybe we can have FOSS LLMs vs open-source ones, like we do with software licenses.

Why not just call them freeware LLMs, which would be much more accurate?

There's nothing "hardcore" or "zealot" about not calling these open source LLMs because there's just ... absolutely nothing there that you call open source in any way. We don't call any other freeware "open source" for being a free download with a limited use license.

This is just "we chose a word to communicate we are different from the other guys". In games, they chose to call it "free to play (f2p)" when addressing a similar issue (but it's also not a great fit since f2p games usually have a server dependency).

The only practical and widely used definition of open source is the one known as the Open Source Definition published by the OSI.

The set of free/libre licenses (as defined by the FSF) is almost identical to the set of open sources licenses (as defined by the OSI).

The debate within FOSS communities has been between copyleft licenses like the GPL, and permissive licenses like the MIT licence. Both copyleft and permissive licenses are considered free/libre by the FSF, and both of them are considered open source by the OSI.