← The lexicon

Open source

adj. Foundations 2023

Software whose code is publicly available for anyone to use, study, and change. In AI, a fully open-source model releases its code and training details, which is rarer than releasing just the weights.

“Strictly speaking it's open-weight, not open source; the training data is still private.”

See also

Part of the Extended list

Open source is on the Extended list: builder jargon, industry terms, and newer slang for when you want to go further. It entered common use around 2023.