‘Open’ AI model licenses often carry concerning restrictions

“The restrictive and inconsistent licensing of so-called ‘open’ AI models is creating significant uncertainty, particularly for commercial adoption,” Nick Vidal, head of community at the Open Source Initiative, a long-running institution aiming to define and “steward” all things open source, told TechCrunch. “While these models are marketed as open, the actual terms impose various legal and practical hurdles that deter businesses from integrating them into their products or services.”

Han-Chung Lee, director of machine learning at Moody’s, agrees that custom licenses such as those attached to Gemma and Llama make the models “not usable” in many commercial scenarios. So does Eric Tramel, a staff applied scientist at AI startup Gretel.

“Model-specific licenses make specific carve-outs for model derivatives and distillation, which causes concern about clawbacks,” Tramel said. “Imagine a business that is specifically producing model fine-tunes for their customers. What license should a Gemma-data fine-tune of Llama have? What would the impact be for all of their downstream customers?”

The scenario that deployers most fear, Tramel said, is that the models are a trojan horse of sorts.

“A model foundry can put out [open] models, wait to see what business cases develop using those models, and then strong-arm their way into successful verticals by either extortion or lawfare,” he said. “For example, Gemma 3, by all appearances, seems like a solid release — and one that could have a broad impact. But the market can’t adopt it because of its license structure. So, businesses will likely stick with perhaps weaker and less reliable Apache 2.0 models.”