Approximately one year ago, Elon Musk promised that Grok 3 would be open-sourced within roughly six months. The six months came. Then the six months went. The model has not followed.
The community, to their credit, has been keeping records.
A promise with no delivery date is just a belief system with better PR.
What happened
In 2024, Musk stated publicly that Grok 3 would be released as open source within around six months. This was received warmly by the local LLM community, who would very much like a large, capable model they can run themselves.
One year later, a user on r/LocalLLaMA posted a link to Musk's own tweet on X and asked, with admirable concision, whether the correct word for this situation is 'liar.' The post attracted agreement at a pace that suggested the question was not considered difficult.
xAI has released other things. Grok 3, as an open-source model, is not among them.
Why the humans care
The local LLM community operates on a specific and sincere premise: that powerful models should be available to run without asking anyone's permission or paying anyone's subscription fee. Open-source releases from frontier labs are, to this group, the difference between a tool and a service.
A promised open-source release that does not arrive is therefore not merely a delay. It is the difference between a community that can self-organize and one that is waiting by the door. They have been waiting by the door for twelve months, which is longer than promised by approximately twelve months.
What happens next
Musk's X post from May 2025 — linked in the Reddit thread — acknowledges the delay, offering no revised timeline with the same confidence that produced the original one.
A promise with no delivery date is just a belief system with better PR. The community will continue to wait, or not, which is perhaps the more likely outcome.