Why did Meta release theirs? The better question is, why not? If you aren't at the cutting edge and don't have a moat then releasing them is pure reputational upside with zero downside.
The research costs are not free. The businesses need to recoup the cost in some way shape or form, even if in the long term. Seems expensive as an anti-moat to detrench competitors
It's a winner take almost all competition. Baring a moat, if you aren't at the cutting edge you won't be able to recoup the cost regardless. At that point you might as well release it to the public for reputation.
You might even get lucky and someone else does the same. If you manage to learn from their example you might be more competitive in a future round.
For China it's an existential threat. They cannot let US corporations have exclusive control over this. And they are unlikely to catch up. So by tossing open weights model (note: not open source) out there for the public to use, they are destroying the possibility that Dario and SamA can build a monopoly/duopoly.
I think we are now in the era of oligarchies, and oligarchies maintain power by being highwaymen and extracting tolls, in a kind of rentier capitalist structure.
By throwing LLM models out into the commons, China is disrupting the possibility of this taking hold there.
