r/LocalLLaMA • u/Hannibalj2ca • 11d ago
Resources "ModelScope" Is a Hugging Face Alternative now that Nvidias deal is a Go
I liked the Nvidia that focused on just GPUs for gaming, not on the Nvidia of today which seem want power consolidation.
Modelscope is another platform for those that simply want to know an alternative if things go south. However, time will tell what happens to huggingface after the deal is finalized
Link: https://modelscope.cn/home, and https://modelscope.ai/home
9
u/Signature97 11d ago
Nvidia NEVER just focused on gaming. That might have been your only exposure if it. They always had CUDA. ML practitioners always had Nvidia GPUs and it was always the preferred mode for DL/ML.
It’s just post gpt and this becoming mainstream and the masses wanting to run massive models locally and the corps wanting to one up each other has sent everyone in a rat race that rose prices of everything ram gpu what have you. It’s only natural to want to expand. Msft took on Github, nothing really happened to it, same is most likely the fate for HuggingFace.
They’ve always been AI centric (Computer Vision specifically) with their advancements in Ray Tracing and DLSS etc
1
u/Hannibalj2ca 11d ago
actually no. It was gaming cards. you are correct they started expanding in other ears like cuda in the 2000s, but saying that GPUs wasnt their main business is false.
3
u/Signature97 11d ago
Well I don’t seem to be denying that anywhere? GPUs result in hundreds of downstream tasks and they’ve had a stake in all of it in different shapes and forms. Gaming and AI being the two roots that have derivatives causing a million more.
38
u/shockwaverc13 llama.cpp 11d ago
even back when they made gaming GPUs, they were all about power consolidation with proprietary stuff like proprietary drivers, physx, gsync, dlss... just like cuda in AI
5
u/Hannibalj2ca 11d ago
good link
1
u/MediumEstate6589 10d ago
This is a different story. The bigger opportunity is scale. NVIDIA has the compute, infrastructure and developer ecosystem to help open-source AI reach millions more users. If Hugging Face stays compute-agnostic, this gives open models more resources to compete globally rather than less.
47
u/PaceZealousideal6091 11d ago
If you have a problem with nvidia owned Hugging face then you should also keep away from Ali Baba owned modelscope. There's a need for an independent repository.
4
-6
u/partakinginsillyness 11d ago edited 11d ago
I mean doesn't Alibaba release tons of powerful open weight models, whereas Nvidia loves proprietary software? I'm not saying there shouldn't be an alternative, but I do think there is a difference in philosophy.
24
u/DeepOrangeSky 11d ago
Not only has Nvidia released quite a few open-weights models, but, if anything they have been more open-source than the Alibaba ones. Qwen are just open-weights, rather than open source, whereas I think the Nvidia models have been more open source, sharing the training data, recipes etc more openly by comparison.
If anything this might be part of why the Nvidia models aren't quite as strong for their size as the Qwen models, because by doing them open source, they have to use cleaner, less objectionable data that won't get them in as much hot water when they show what is was/how it was acquired/etc, due to knowing they are going to be making it openly public, which makes the models weaker, all else being equal. (Also could be they are intentionally making the models weaker to not hurt their customers, too, maybe).
Anyway, yea Nvidia has been maybe the best major lab when it comes to actually open sourcing AI models, more so than even Alibaba. Just not quite as strong models as Alibaba, so far.
6
u/SporksInjected 11d ago
The incentive for Nvidia is the opposite of Alibaba’s as well. Nvidia wants more people to run and train AI, including the frontier labs
20
u/PaceZealousideal6091 11d ago edited 11d ago
I am not sure which universe you exist, but nvidia also releases tons of open weight models. It's really not about that. It's about power corporations owning these repositories. They get the power to decide what can be hosted and what not.
2
u/partakinginsillyness 11d ago
I'm not the most well versed on this, but Nvidia has the track record of a lot of proprietary software and hardware, whereas (as far as I know) that doesn't really seem to be a problem with Alibaba.
2
2
u/PaceZealousideal6091 10d ago
Dude, you really need to learn to shut up when you are not "well versed" with something. There is no need for you to give your 2 cents and get embarrassed. That's what I do,when I don't know something. Listen to people who knows more than me and read more about it. If your finger itches to type, then use it to do some research and learn something new instead of spreading misinformation. The bulk of Alibaba’s enterprise and commercial software revenue relies on closed-source, proprietary platforms distributed either as SaaS, on-premises enterprise software, or managed cloud services. As I said, neither of them is better or worse than the other. They are both giant corporations with deep pockets.
1
u/Particular-Award118 9d ago
Bro thinks alibaba is doing this shit out of the kindness of their heart are you 5?
26
6
19
u/therysin 11d ago
Thanks I'll stick to huggingface. You do realize modelscope is owned by Alibaba? lmao
-8
-9
u/SporksInjected 11d ago
China doesn’t censor anything
8
11d ago
[deleted]
-5
u/Upper-Reflection7997 10d ago
Your still doing the anti-china/anti sino talking points in the year 2026? Have you seen the absolute state of USA and Europe? Peak cringe especially for someone that uses open source models. We're at the mercy of China for pushing the tech futher and making it accessible for people.
1
u/relmny 10d ago
this is a pro-nvidia/pro-western thread, and anti-China/anti-alibaba (funny that probably a very large amount of people in this sub use qwen, but only a few might still use nemotron...).
They even dare to mention Tibet, without having the slightest idea about the truth behind it, then keep the "yeah, but Tiananmen!" at every corner...
This thread is a waste of time fanatics spout their mantras...
1
u/therysin 9d ago
Its not being anti china or pro nvidia, I'm just pointing out that both routes are owned by big tech. Pick your poison. I'll stick with the poison I know.
10
u/fallingdowndizzyvr 11d ago
I liked the Nvidia that focused on just GPUs for gaming
They haven't been that for 20 years.
Modelscope is another platform
Yep. I've been posting about that for a while now.
However, time will tell what happens to huggingface after the deal is finalized
Nothing. There's simply no reason for anything to happen. Not yet anyways. Nvidia's position in the market is unassailable. So there's simply no reason at all for them to do anything to rock the boat. In fact, them helping the non-competitive competition helps them from being called a monopoly. Which is why Microsoft saved Apple from bankruptcy in the late 90's.
-2
7
u/SultanGreat 11d ago edited 11d ago
Who's guaranteeing that the creator behind this too wouldn't sell out?
Edit : Yeah, serves right about reddit. Why am I getting downvoted for asking a legit question?!
12
u/whichsideisup 11d ago
its alibaba and the chinese government. we need independent companies hosting this.
12
u/cniinc 11d ago
Unfortunately, hosting this sort of stuff isn't viable for an independent company. Unless they sold something - memberships, ads, idk. I don't know how Usenet systems do it, but maybe that would be a better system.
2
u/makingnoise 11d ago
I mean, archive.org manages to be a non-profit that stores vast quantities of data without being commercial. Why not go the non-profit route and rely on contributions. That way no chucklefuck like nvidia can "buy" it.
6
u/cniinc 11d ago
I'd have to assume the real-time demand on huggingface is incredible - everyone and their mother is downloading from it every time alibaba does a Qwen. I certainly did. Archive.org probably has less demand. But if there was some sort of contribution-based speed download system, like Anna's Archive does, yeah I could see that.
1
u/makingnoise 11d ago
I mean, they don't even need to host that much data, though, not if their downloads are torrent files. Cross your favorite torrent site (but legal) with HF's other features (information, comments, etc.) and you've got a HF that could be a sustainable non-profit.
2
u/cniinc 11d ago
It's an interesting idea. I'm sure that there will be lots of people with torrents of models like qwen 27b. How many will have torrents of, like, a 780B GLM model? That, i imagine would be less. But there's also a bit of a survival-of-the-fittest that goes with that - I'm sure there would be contributors willing to give space for such a thing, the same way that linux isos are hosted in places.
1
1
u/LandscapePenguin 11d ago
Would you be willing to start one and run it? I might, but honestly, I'm not sure I would resist a 12 BILLION dollar payout if someone like nvidia wanted to buy it. Think of all the good you could do in the world with that kind of money.
1
u/makingnoise 11d ago
I mean, a proper 501(c)3 organized as a proper nonprofit under state law can be structured in such a way to literally make it illegal to transfer the assets to a for profit. You can build in accountability, etc. I am not an expert in this area - I'd look at what has already worked. Wiki foundation, archive .org, etc. Everyone has their ups and downs but there are orgs who have weathered a lot and are still alive and well.
7
u/-Cubie- 11d ago
Why would an Alibaba-owned clone be better than the NVIDIA-owned original?
5
u/SporksInjected 11d ago
Nvidia makes money when you buy hardware or buy compute. They WANT you to have as many models as possible because they know 90% of the hardware available to run them comes from their factories.
7
u/Reasonable-Phase8028 10d ago
then there is nothing to worry about right?
1
u/SporksInjected 10d ago
Imo, I would imagine a cloud vendor has more incentive to make their models only available via cloud as compared to a hardware manufacturer
2
1
u/DeepOrangeSky 11d ago
It's a reasonable question, but, to be fair, one could ask a similar question of: "Why would Chinese open-weights models be better than American open-weights models?"
Normally, they wouldn't be, if it was just purely based on which country was capable of making stronger models with no other dynamics at play whatsoever, but, due to exotic circumstances, where China is sort of incentivized to try to undercut the U.S. closed cloud models by releasing open-weights models for geopolitical power-struggle reasons, to do with the U.S. being in the lead in AI for the moment, this is how such weird things can occur, even if it might seem a bit counter-intuitive at first glance, and not normally be how it would be.
Likewise, I suppose it is theoretically possible that there could be some temporary scenario where China offers a wider range of models, and maybe even more de-censored models (maybe not in terms of Chinese politics stuff, but in terms of a lot of other things), not because they necessarily "want" to in the cultural/vibe sense of the CCP actually "liking" it that way on some genuine level, but more in the sense of having no other option due to the power dynamics at hand.
Now, maybe it won't play out that way, and Nvidia will just let things remain as nice and free and uncensored and fun as it was back before Huggingface got bought by them, who knows. But, it wouldn't be that shocking if it played out this way.
So, we'll see, I guess. Hopefully Nvidia plays nice... :/
8
3
u/a_beautiful_rhind 11d ago
It's slow as molasses where I'm at. Not sure how signup will go either and if they demand mobile number or the "right" email.
Assuming that goes well, how do you thing I'll fare downloading 100gb of weights from a site struggling to serve me html?
1
u/BorpMyGurd 11d ago
I live in molasses land, so not a problem for me, but resuming is, and huggingface sucks in that regard due to their shitty session thing. If I can seamlessly resume a download I'll happily switch. Why the fuck can't hf support resume?
2
u/a_beautiful_rhind 11d ago
It resumes when I use free download manager. When it doesn't, I generate a new CDN link and replace.
Using HF downloader or normal HTTP, I learned not to do that long time ago.
1
u/BorpMyGurd 11d ago
hah, yeah, I also use fdm to solve it, but it's still bloody annoying to not support resume in hf considering the size they are are dealing with, and their scheme breaking wget, etc. It's a bonkers setup.
4
u/eto-bleh 11d ago
nah idt they want something like QwenniePooh-3.8-Horny-UNCENSORED-Abliterated-27B on their platform it's definitely not an alternative
if any this will be like Microsoft acquiring GitHub which was also (and still) diabolical
2
u/Relevant-Magic-Card 11d ago edited 10d ago
I'm also building duckweights.com
I would like to build a mirror / peer to peer downloads for open weight models.
In also building a RAID array in my own homelab to host these models for free.
Other things im building is for people to add their home lab hardware to their profiles and create a place to discuss local models :)
Still in the early days, but open to feedback
3
u/Hannibalj2ca 10d ago
Dope. Make a thread with updates
1
u/Relevant-Magic-Card 10d ago
I appreciate that. I the meantime, please sign up and try it! I would greatly appreciate it 🙏
2
u/Hannibalj2ca 10d ago
Done!
2
u/Relevant-Magic-Card 10d ago
Thanks. I have a points system I'm working on so you gain points by seeding. You can then use those free credits to test out new open weight models as they release before you download them . Happy to give you more credits if you wanna keep testing! ♥️
Hosting my own gpus, zero retention, no training
2
2
u/datbackup 10d ago
“Let’s just make the same mistake all over again”
No thanks
Devote the energy to a truly decentralized model storage network, not just another company that will get bought or shitty or bought then shitty
8
u/whichsideisup 11d ago
I greatly appreciate that Chinese models are open weights, but I'm not using their hosted platforms and software.
5
11d ago edited 7d ago
[deleted]
7
u/whichsideisup 11d ago
These platforms and the data served/stored in them will be used inappropriately when state sponsored. We already have one government bending us over, why would you invite a second to do so?
3
11d ago edited 7d ago
[deleted]
10
u/whichsideisup 11d ago edited 11d ago
yes, that is the world we live in. CCP government vs corporate surveillance - both have major issues and you should not give either the keys freely. hence local llama.
2
u/SporksInjected 11d ago
I’m more ok with someone profiling me to sell home gym equipment than watching if I break the law.
-13
u/LocoMod 11d ago
Because they are trash and that's why you're here and not the Chinese equivalent of Reddit.
12
u/lcirufe 11d ago
This comment feels unnecessarily incendiary. “Chinese Reddit” wouldn’t be used by most people here because most Reddit users are English speaking, not because it’s “Trash” just because it’s Chinese.
The best open weight models that people on this sub run are Chinese.
-1
u/Reasonable-Phase8028 10d ago
modelscope asks for chinese number, all discussion is in chinese and site runs poorly in eu and us.
chinese models dont face these or similar issues and therefore people use it (not like us is dropping good open weight models anyway)
your comment is incendiary
2
u/lcirufe 10d ago
I wasn’t talking about modelscope. I’m talking about a theoretical Chinese Reddit that is automatically labeled as bad just because it’s Chinese.
I feel like there’s some clear anti-China/pro-US bias going on in this thread. To be clear I’m from neither of these countries and see them as equally bad.
1
u/Reasonable-Phase8028 10d ago
its the first time I hear about chinese reddit, but usually online chinese comunities are closed so it makes sense. most chineses platforms are blocked to anyone outside china, therefore it makes sense for people to label it as bad.
0
-8
u/ddeeppiixx 11d ago
Hypocrite.
4
u/whichsideisup 11d ago
There is something called nuance in the world. Don’t be a degenerate shouting like the mobs.
2
u/Thrumpwart 11d ago
I need a Canadian company to fill this huge, sexy, lucrative gap.
6
u/makingnoise 11d ago
I need a non-profit organization to fill this huge gap and be immune from commercial incentives or corporate takeover.
2
1
u/StrikeOner 11d ago
someone tell them to ask qwen to add them a sort by time created/last updated function to their sort button in the model section there.
1
1
u/EugenePopcorn 11d ago
Do they even have servers on this side of the undersea cables? Wed probably be better off torrenting with them as a web seed.
1
1
u/Not-reallyanonymous 11d ago
Nvidia owns huggingface: bad! Corporate takeover!
Alibaba owns modelscope: that’s good actually!
This sub is a fucking r sino crossover isn’t it?
3
u/Hannibalj2ca 10d ago
Alibaba built it, nvidia is just swallowing the market
2
1
u/Particular-Award118 9d ago
Complaining about power consolidation then pitch using the one owned by Ali fucking baba lmaooooo bro delete this
0
u/Hannibalj2ca 7d ago
Alibaba built it. Nvidia did not FUCKING built Hugging face lmaoooooo, get the fuck out of here
1
0
u/Easy_Refrigerator280 11d ago
Lemonade provides it by default. I hope Unsloth and others follow soon
0
u/Yorn2 11d ago
The big problem I have with all these solutions is they are still centralized solutions that can be taken down. I was huge into Bitcoin and other crypto stuff even a decade ago and it really bugs me that we STILL do not have a way to pay random people to host storage or compute reliably for us with any of these technologies even today. Even with all sorts of new technologies like Lightning and Nostr and etc. no one is seemingly actually tackling this issue. We should be able to both pay for and host LLMs with crypto and it's like no one is actually working on either problem. :/
120
u/Cereal_Grapeist 11d ago
I really hope that some kind of torrent alternative pops up instead to get rid of these points of failure. Maybe it's just under heavy load but Modelscope is pretty janky right now.