Terminology exists for a reason. Doubly so for well-established terms of art that pertain to licensing and contract law.

They could have used "open wights" which would have conveyed the company's desired intent just as well as "open source", but without the ambiguity. They deliberately chose to misuse a well established term instead.

I applaud and thank deepseek for opening their weights, but i absolutely condemn them and others (e.g Facebook) for their deliberate and continued misuse of the term. I and others like me will continue to raise this point as long as we are active in this field, so expect to see this criticism for decades.

Hopefully one of these companies losses a lawsuit due to these shenanigans. Perhaps then they wouldn't misuse these terms so brazenly.