Been using both, like Chatbox for how snappy it is, but is local only, vs Lobechat which allows you to setup centralized host to have shared host across clients but feels a bit clunkier.
I hoped that someone would fork OpenWebUI before the license change an maintain a OSS Version. Like Valkey¹ is the OSS Fork of Redis and OpenSearch² is the OSS Fork of ElasticSearch.
If somebody forks this project, I dare you to name it "Open Open Web UI". If they threaten you, just rename to "Open WebAI", "Open UI Web", and other permutations, until their legal budget runs dry.
Clearly this company is following OpenAI's playbook- start with lofty OSS ideals, put "open" in your name, then fall down a slippery slope.
Interesting. They mention the following as some of their reasoning for this license:
> They market these rebranded solutions in commercial offerings to customers and organizations, sometimes at a massive markup.
> In some cases, they even go further by intentionally obscuring the fact that Open WebUI is available for free, so that they can charge unsuspecting users outrageous fees for something that should be accessible to everyone.
But that makes me think - if they really cared about this being free, they could have dealt with it by just using AGPLv3 coupled with enforcing their trademark, right?
Yeah if they only cared about misuse of their brand they need only enforce their trademark. But they're also arguing the other way and don't want anyone to strip their brand from their forks either:
> bad actors taking our work, stripping the branding, selling it as their own, and giving nothing back.
Contradicting their original BSD License which welcomes anyone freely using, sharing and building on OSS software, even commercial forks. So now its a custom BSD-based license but with the aim of preventing competitive forks.
I've always thought it was incredibly rude to call this project something as incredibly generic as "Open WebUI". For one it's impossible to find documentation because it's so generic as tl be utterly meaningless, and also you're intentionally confusing any and all open web UI projects past and future.
Not to mention it's just janky and hard to work with. And of course every bit of the official documentation is LLM slop. The only way I've been able to navigate is to use another LLM to tell me what these settings are for. Said LLM, having ingested the LLM slop documentation, also produces garbage that's barely correct.
OpenWebUI and similar ChatGPT-lite interfaces are a bad UI/UX for LLMs. "Normies" should not be using local models and those who want local models should be exposed to the settings/complexity that projects like oobabooga/sillytavern/comfyUI force a user to educate themselves about (i.e. LLM sampler settings, chat templates, etc). It's telling that the best AI generated content is made by people using these prosumer style projects, and not using simplified trash like OpenWebUI.
The proliferation of bad UI in consumption of AI systems has done unfathomable damage to discoverability of LLM features, especially new innovations in LLMs like far better sampling algorithms (i.e. min_p). Users are massively harmed by the features they don't know about and wish they were using but don't/can't because they are shepherded into the most brain-dead simple UI possible.
If we had a society of actual engineers and hackers, sure.
However, LLMs for the vast majority of people are simple chatbot oracles. The people paying exorbinant wealth in investments are aiming for essentially the Apple of AI where it magically just works and creates a new market to redefine the paradigm.
LLMs are yet again another cyclical cycle where ideas influence material reality and vice versa. Magic is seen to be worth more than the wizard and his tools behind the curtain. The market is hoping that the masses don't find out about the wizard and his tools, so the illusion can continue to live and provide the basis for dreams.
Open WebUI also lets you tweak those parameters, BTW.
How does this compare to the already established open source solutions such as Chatbox (https://github.com/chatboxai/chatbox), or Lobechat (https://github.com/lobehub/lobe-chat)?
Been using both, like Chatbox for how snappy it is, but is local only, vs Lobechat which allows you to setup centralized host to have shared host across clients but feels a bit clunkier.
One of the biggest differences I noticed off the bat is llms includes prompt caching which I'm not sure I've seen in any other self hosted UI options
I see Lobe and Chatbox both have prompt caching toggles, are you referring to something else?
Where do you see that? I can't seem to find it in the web or desktop apps for lobechat.
EDIT: I also don't see it in Chatbox
It would be good to share other OSS alternatives here, some alternatives I've seen mentioned in Reddit threads:
GitHub links:
- https://github.com/janhq/jan
- https://github.com/danny-avila/LibreChat
- https://github.com/Mintplex-Labs/anything-llm
Witsy is very good.
* https://github.com/nbonamy/witsy
They don't really do a good job describing the features, but you can use it for any OpenAI compatible local API as well (llama.cpp, koboldcpp, etc).
https://github.com/agent0ai/agent-zero
I'm leaning towards this one myself but I'm still early in researching alternatives.
I hoped that someone would fork OpenWebUI before the license change an maintain a OSS Version. Like Valkey¹ is the OSS Fork of Redis and OpenSearch² is the OSS Fork of ElasticSearch.
[1]: https://github.com/valkey-io/valkey
[2]: https://github.com/opensearch-project/OpenSearch
It is honestly ridiculous that "Open WebUI" made it past the US trademark office.
https://www.trademarkia.com/open-webui-99027970
If somebody forks this project, I dare you to name it "Open Open Web UI". If they threaten you, just rename to "Open WebAI", "Open UI Web", and other permutations, until their legal budget runs dry.
Clearly this company is following OpenAI's playbook- start with lofty OSS ideals, put "open" in your name, then fall down a slippery slope.
I’ve created a native, cross-platform ollama client in Qt C++ called Vox (https://get-vox.com). For those interested, you can join the waitlist.
Isn’t openwebui also oss?
They've switched to a custom license to inhibit competitive forks [1], in their own words [2]:
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/1kfhkal/open_we...
[2] https://docs.openwebui.com/license/
Interesting. They mention the following as some of their reasoning for this license:
> They market these rebranded solutions in commercial offerings to customers and organizations, sometimes at a massive markup.
> In some cases, they even go further by intentionally obscuring the fact that Open WebUI is available for free, so that they can charge unsuspecting users outrageous fees for something that should be accessible to everyone.
But that makes me think - if they really cared about this being free, they could have dealt with it by just using AGPLv3 coupled with enforcing their trademark, right?
Yeah if they only cared about misuse of their brand they need only enforce their trademark. But they're also arguing the other way and don't want anyone to strip their brand from their forks either:
> bad actors taking our work, stripping the branding, selling it as their own, and giving nothing back.
Contradicting their original BSD License which welcomes anyone freely using, sharing and building on OSS software, even commercial forks. So now its a custom BSD-based license but with the aim of preventing competitive forks.
Realistically, how does an open source project enforce a trademark, when that carries a high cost (lawyers)?
Said differently, which option (sue for trademark infringement, or for license violation) has a lower cost? (including damages)
Out of interest: They talk a lot about how they think/hope their license is not contradictory. Has anybody with legal expertise verified this?
Open-ish source is one thing, but an untested custom license is an issue in itself.
How is their restriction any less permissive than other OSI-approved licenses' attribution clauses?
They could have just used a GPL license.
Hustlers will always hustle
I've always thought it was incredibly rude to call this project something as incredibly generic as "Open WebUI". For one it's impossible to find documentation because it's so generic as tl be utterly meaningless, and also you're intentionally confusing any and all open web UI projects past and future.
Not to mention it's just janky and hard to work with. And of course every bit of the official documentation is LLM slop. The only way I've been able to navigate is to use another LLM to tell me what these settings are for. Said LLM, having ingested the LLM slop documentation, also produces garbage that's barely correct.
It's a bad project.
OpenWebUI and similar ChatGPT-lite interfaces are a bad UI/UX for LLMs. "Normies" should not be using local models and those who want local models should be exposed to the settings/complexity that projects like oobabooga/sillytavern/comfyUI force a user to educate themselves about (i.e. LLM sampler settings, chat templates, etc). It's telling that the best AI generated content is made by people using these prosumer style projects, and not using simplified trash like OpenWebUI.
The proliferation of bad UI in consumption of AI systems has done unfathomable damage to discoverability of LLM features, especially new innovations in LLMs like far better sampling algorithms (i.e. min_p). Users are massively harmed by the features they don't know about and wish they were using but don't/can't because they are shepherded into the most brain-dead simple UI possible.
If we had a society of actual engineers and hackers, sure.
However, LLMs for the vast majority of people are simple chatbot oracles. The people paying exorbinant wealth in investments are aiming for essentially the Apple of AI where it magically just works and creates a new market to redefine the paradigm.
LLMs are yet again another cyclical cycle where ideas influence material reality and vice versa. Magic is seen to be worth more than the wizard and his tools behind the curtain. The market is hoping that the masses don't find out about the wizard and his tools, so the illusion can continue to live and provide the basis for dreams.
Open WebUI also lets you tweak those parameters, BTW.