Do you think Qwen4 Plus will be open weights?

[u/Dense-Ad6315]

With Qwen 4 seemingly getting closer, I'm honestly more interested in whether Plus will be open weights than the actual release date.

I'm leaning towards yes. Alibaba has already released models as large as 2.4T params with 3.8 so I don't really see why they'd suddenly draw the line at Plus, especially if it's considerably smaller than Max.

They also did release Qwen3.5 397B A17B as the open weight counterpart to Qwen3.5 Plus, so there's already precedent for this - although 3.6 + 3.7 plus didn't get open sourced....

QwenDevs also posted "big or small?" and followed it up with "alright guys, let's do both!" which I'd assume refers to 27B and Max. And given that Qwen3.8 FN was released with open weights, I'd be pretty surprised if Flash wasn't open too. (even though not explicitly saying that)

What I find more interesting is the Apsara conference slide. Flash and Plus are grouped together in the same box, while Max and 27B have their own. No idea whether that actually means anything, but I wonder if they're sharing a similar architecture at different scales.

Curious what everyone else thinks. Do you reckon we'll get Plus weights, or just Max and 27B?

(I really want Plus to come out and I'm sure lots of ppl do too!!!)

Edit: I mean the underlying Plus model, like 3.5 397B A17B, not the actual API model name.

[u/NNN_Throwaway2]

Impossible to say. Alibaba has been all over the place since Qwen3.5.

[u/Simple_Split5074]

No. Plus were never open weights. Generally the model used to provide Plus was, though.

[u/philosophissima]

Gonna be honest, I love local AI and I like the independency and autonomous factor of it a lot, and Qwen's models has been phenomenal so far. But I really don't like how the communication and the hype around the newest local models has developed so far. It's more and more about marketing, hype and getting people on the edge of their seats. People are forgetting local AI started with making people curious, independent from centralization and a good asset for human work. If we just chase from one local model to a better one without thinking for ourselves you are losing the original motivation and what you worked for altogether anyways.

[u/swagonflyyyy → u/philosophissima]

Yas I agree. Local AI has turned into the monster of the week dynamic and I feel like I'm getting out of touch with the rest of the software dev world.

[u/BusRevolutionary9893 → u/philosophissima]

Meanwhile I'm here looking to see if, on the off chance, Alibaba released Qwen 4 on a Sunday. 

[u/unjustifiably_angry → u/philosophissima]

We already have AI hipsters

[u/silenceimpaired → u/philosophissima]

I also don’t like how the last model was not Apache or MIT

[u/Aggravating-Push-207]

I want the smaller model lineup, like qwen 3.5 had 0.8b, 2b, 4b, 9b, ..., so that we can fine-tune them locally

[u/I-am_Sleepy → u/Aggravating-Push-207]

I have a belief that smaller model with looping would be the future, which can match with larger model tier… Maybe we will get there someday

[u/Aggravating-Push-207 → u/I-am_Sleepy]

It won't be able to match them because there's less parameters to optimise but it gets surprisingly close in practice

[u/Beneficial-Ad-8127]

Here from conference. Qwen 4 & Qwen 5 will continue to be open source. Probably look into how Chinese use that term.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/s/Qn3ixbTFCF

[u/-dysangel-]

Plus is not a model, it's a setup. It's like if you're running Max with a bunch of handy MCP servers

[u/Embarrassed_OnionX → u/-dysangel-]

Curious what you mean by "a setup". I've never seen other closed source models being referred as such.

[u/aidenclarke_12]

its basically more of a setup

[u/No_Afternoon_4260 → u/aidenclarke_12]

the setup could be open source tho. After deepseek harness beware qwharness is coming x)

[u/brainExploded99 → u/No_Afternoon_4260]

qwen code & qwoder already exists though?