TechCrunch's open source licenses explainer walks through the classic families: MIT, Apache, BSD, GPL. For AI models, the families matter less than four switches that every license in our records sets one way or the other: can you use it commercially, redistribute it, modify it, and must you credit the author? We counted the switches across the 200 open models in our license dataset.
The four switches, counted
| Permission | Allowed | Not allowed |
|---|---|---|
| Redistribute the model | 200 | 0 |
| Modify the model | 200 | 0 |
| Use it commercially | 192 | 8 |
| Attribution required | 198 require it | 2 do not |
Two switches never move. Every model in our records, permissive or restricted, allows redistribution and modification: that is what makes the weights "open" in the first place. Commercial use is where the first real split sits. The 8 models that bar it are research or non-commercial releases: Qwen2.5-Coder 3B under a research license, OpenELM 3B under Apple's research license, Codestral 22B under a non-production license, Mistral Large under a research license, OPT 6.7B, MiniMax M2.7, Qwen 2.5 3B, and SOLAR 10.7B under CC BY-NC.
One wrinkle the explainers skip: the same family hides under several names. Our records hold the Llama 3.1 community license under two capitalizations and DeepSeek under three name variants, which is part of why 200 models produce 50 license names. When you compare licenses, compare families and clauses, not name strings.
Where licenses actually differ
If the switches are nearly uniform, why do license checks matter? Because 89 of the 200 models carry restriction text beyond the switches: acceptable-use lists, user thresholds (29 records state one), and conditions on derivatives. Only 2 models in the whole dataset waive attribution (InternLM2.5 7B Chat and Nemotron 3 Nano 4B). The explainer version of a license is the four switches; the shipped-product version is the switches plus the fine print, which is why our restrictions census counts the clauses separately.
Run any model you plan to ship through the ShipSafe Filter to see its four switches and its restriction text side by side.
Sources: TechCrunch, Open source licenses: Everything you need to know (January 12, 2025); this site's license records for 200 open models (collected September 2025). License summaries are orientation, not legal advice.