A Quantitative Comparison of Pre-Trained Model Registries to Traditional Software Package Registries

Software Package Registries are an integral part of the Software Supply Chain, acting as collaborative platforms that unite contributors, users, and packages, and streamline package management processes. Much of the engineering work around reusing packages from these platforms deals with the issue of synthesis, combining multiple packages into a new package or downstream project. Recently, researchers have examined registries that specialize in providing Pre-Trained Models (PTMs), to explore the nuances of the PTM Supply Chain. These works suggest that the main engineering challenge of PTM reuse is not synthesis but selection. However, these findings have been primarily qualitative and lacking quantitative evidence of the observed differences. I therefore evaluate the following hypothesis:

The prioritization of selection over synthesis in Pre-Trained Model reuse means that the evolution and reuse of Pre-Trained Models differs compared to traditional software. The evolution of models will be more linear, and the reuse of models will be more centralized.