https://old.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/1kfhkal/open_webui_is_no_longer_open_source/

https://old.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1mncrqp/ollama/

Basically, they're both using their popularity to push proprietary bits, which their devleopment is shifting to. They're enshittifying.

In addition, ollama is just a demanding leech on llama.cpp that contributes nothing back, while hiding the connection to the underlying library at every opportunity. They do scummy things like.

• Rename models for SEO, like "Deepseek R1" which is really the 7b distill.

• It has really bad default settings (like a 2K default context limit, and default imatrix free quants) which give local LLM runners bad impressions of the whole ecosystem.

• They mess with chat templates, and on top of that, create other bugs that don't exist in base llama.cpp

• Sometimes, they lag behind GGUF support.

• And other times, they make thier own sloppy implementations for 'day 1' support of trending models. They often work poorly; the support's just there for SEO. But this also leads to some public GGUFs not working with the underlying llama.cpp library, or working inexplicably bad, polluting the issue tracker of llama.cpp.

I could go on and on with examples of their drama, but needless to say most everyone in localllama hates them. The base llama.cpp maintainers hate them, and they're nice devs.

You should use llama.cpp llama-server as an API endpoint. Or, alternatively the ik_llama.cpp fork, kobold.cpp, or croco.cpp. Or TabbyAPI as an 'alternate' GPU focused quantized runtime. Or SGLang if you just batch small models. Llamacpp-python, LMStudo; literally anything but ollama.

As for the UI, thats a muddier answer and totally depends what you use LLMs for. I use mikupad for its 'raw' notebook mode and logit displays, but there are many options. Llama.cpp has a pretty nice built in one now.