Mark Zuckerberg and Meta believe that open source is the key to a more vibrant technology industry. A dig at Apple, but not empty words either.

In front of a sold-out arena in San Francisco, Mark Zuckerberg expressed his love for open source. According to the CEO of Meta, there is an ideological battle between open and closed software in the technology industry. Zuckerberg is clearly in the open source camp and wants to work with Meta to help open software win the battle.

“Part of my goal for the next 10 to 15 years is to build the next generation of open platforms and let the open platforms win,” Zuckerberg said. “I think that will lead to a much more dynamic technology industry.”

Zuckerberg’s prophetic words contain a mockery of Apple. “We face strong competition in many different aspects of what we do. Will the platform of the future be the closed, integrated model that Apple has always used?” There was also a compliment for Microsoft, which, according to Zuckerberg, is setting a good example with Windows.

Words and deeds

Zuckerberg and Meta are walking the talk. Meta’s LLama LLMs are open source. Meta received a lot of praise with the latest generation of LLama 3.1. Meta’s latest model is in many ways equal to or even superior to its closed counterparts from OpenAI, Google and Anthropic.

Open source will always have advantages and disadvantages. Proponents see the open nature as a driver for innovation and democratization of technology. There are conflicting opinions about the security of open source. External experts can help scan the code for vulnerabilities, but even those with less good intentions have free access in principle.