• Mark Zuckerberg is committed to building a winning open-source platform.
• On a podcast, Zuckerberg discussed the ideological tug-of-war between open- and closed-source tech.
• Meta released multiple open-source models of its Llama AI, garnering both criticism and acclaim.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to go all in on open-source.

At a live show of the “Acquired” podcast hosted in San Francisco last week, Zuckerberg spoke about Meta’s competition and the next frontier of the tech industry, including the “ideological battle” over closed and open models.

“We face a lot of competition in a lot of different aspects of what we do,” Zuckerberg said while talking about the operating systems of the future.

“Are they going to be the closed integrated model that Apple has always done? Which, again, there are multiple good ways to build things,” he said. “In the PC era, Windows with the open ecosystem was the leader.”

The closed model is often more secure because the software’s source code is not publicly available. Meanwhile, an open-source model can help a technology develop more quickly and become more democratic because the source code is available to the general public, who can modify and redistribute it.

“Part of my goal for the next 10-15 years, the next generation of platforms, is to build the next generation of open platforms and have the open platforms win,” Zuckerberg said. “I think that’s going to lead to a much more vibrant tech industry.”

Zuck has already made strides in that direction. In 2023, Meta released Llama 2, a (mostly) open-source AI model that quickly became a hit among the tech community.

It’s not without risks, though. Bad actors can co-opt open-source models. Meta’s Llama 2 could give users detailed instructions on how to make anthrax, something Zuckerberg faced some heat for on Capitol Hill. He argued that similar information can be found elsewhere, too.

In July, Zuckerberg received props across the tech industry when Meta released the open-source Llama 3.1, which some industry execs called an “incredible gift” at the time.