Question 1

Is the Open Source AI Academy free?

Accepted Answer

Yes, 100% free. No sign-up, no credit card. All 15 modules, 18 lessons, and 45 quiz questions are accessible immediately. Your progress saves locally in your browser.

Question 2

What topics does the Open Source AI Academy cover?

Accepted Answer

The course covers Transformer architecture, Meta Llama 4, Mistral, DeepSeek, Qwen, Gemma, Hugging Face, quantization (GGUF, AWQ, GPTQ, EXL2), Ollama, llama.cpp, vLLM, SGLang, LoRA/QLoRA fine-tuning, pre-training from scratch, RLHF/DPO/GRPO alignment, and production MLOps with Docker and Kubernetes.

Question 3

What is vLLM?

Accepted Answer

vLLM is the industry-standard engine for high-throughput production LLM serving. It uses PagedAttention for efficient GPU memory management and continuous batching for >90% GPU utilization.

Question 4

Do I need expensive hardware to run open-source models?

Accepted Answer

No. Many models can run on consumer GPUs (e.g., RTX 4090) or even CPUs via llama.cpp. The course covers deployment strategies for every budget, from Raspberry Pi edge devices to multi-GPU production clusters.

Factor	Closed API	Open Source
Data Privacy	Data leaves your infrastructure	100% on-prem, air-gapped capable
Cost at Scale	Per-token pricing compounds	Fixed hardware cost, unlimited tokens
Customization	Limited to prompt engineering	Full fine-tuning, LoRA, RLHF
Vendor Lock-in	Dependent on provider	Run anywhere, switch models freely
Compliance	GDPR/HIPAA concerns	Full regulatory control

Why Open Source AI Matters

The Case for Open Source AI

Why Go Open Source?