Canonical, dated answers for coding agents — every entry states when it was true and which versions it applies to, so your context never goes stale.
Qwen3 (Apr 2025, 0.6B→235B MoE, hybrid thinking modes) and the 3.5/3.8 line (2026) made Qwen the most-downloaded open family — Apache 2.0, strong multilingual, Omni variants.
Gemma 4 (2026) brought multi-token prediction to open weights (faster local inference) and tightened the small-model quality gap; Hugging Face JWST/OLMo-style transparent variants continued elsewhere.
The 2024-2026 relicensing wave (HashiCorp BUSL, Redis AGPL-return, Sentry Fair Source) means "open source" needs checking: OSI MIT/Apache vs BUSL(source-available) vs AGPL(copyleft) change what you can build. Check before you depend.
Mistral 3 (Dec 2 2025) returned to open weights with an Apache-2.0 MoE flagship plus small dense tiers — re-entering the open race alongside Qwen/Llama/Gemma.
Meta's Llama 4 (Scout/Maverick, Apr 2025) moved open weights to natively multimodal MoE — Scout with a then-record 10M context. The open-weights center of gravity; license stays custom (not OSI).