Save 4o and 5.1 for API—Sign a Petition for Open-Source

Just4o.chat has given us an incredible space with great memory and features so that we could continue working with 4o, 4.1, 5.1, and many other incredible models.

OpenAI’s retirement GPT-4o, 4.1 on February 13 and the upcoming GPT-5.1 on March 11 have disrupted real work and help. Just4o.chat has provided an answer for us for the retirement of GPT-4o and GPT-5.1, but let’s make it a permanent answer: Teachers, researchers, accessibility advocates, creative writers, and many others have built entire projects around these models. 4o in particular has helped many neurodivergent individuals. Losing these models breaks continuity and leaves gaps that newer models won't fill the same way.

I started a petition asking OpenAI to open-source these legacy models under a permissive license. Not to slow them down—just to let the community help maintain and research them after they stop updating. We're talking safety research, accessibility tools, education projects. Things that matter.

Honestly, I think there's a win-win here. OpenAI keeps pushing forward. The community helps preserve what works. Regulators see responsible openness. Everyone benefits.

If you've built something meaningful with these models, or you think legacy AI tools should stay accessible, please consider signing and sharing. Would love to hear what you're working on or how this retirement is affecting you.

https://www.change.org/p/openai-preserve-legacy-gptmodels-by-open-sourcing-gpt-4o-and-gpt-5-1?utm_campaign=starter_dashboard&utm_medium=reddit_post&utm_source=share_petition&utm_term=starter_dashboard&recruiter=211519

Further thoughts: concretely, we could propose: 

1. An open-source release under a license that

• requires safety cards & evals,

• forbids disallowed use (similar to Stable Diffusion’s RAIL licenses), and

• lets non-commercial research & education keep going

2. A frozen checkpoint—no further training, so misuse risks stay bounded.

3. A migration toolkit (prompt-translation + behavior diffs) so teams can plan for newer models instead of being blindsided.

That’s the “middle ground”—continuity plus responsible openness. What we’re trying to avoid is the very short “sorry, it’s gone” experience many users had when 4-frames were pulled.