Comment by jfoster
9 hours ago
A lot of the previous Qwen models seem to have used Apache licenses, among others:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwen#List_of_models
Unfortunately, it looks like this model is using a much more restrictive license:
9 hours ago
A lot of the previous Qwen models seem to have used Apache licenses, among others:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwen#List_of_models
Unfortunately, it looks like this model is using a much more restrictive license:
Calling open-weights as open-source in marketing materials is the usual misrepresentation. But now with the restriction on commercial use (which is against opensource definition) it is not even open-weights, technically it would be more accurate to call it weights-available.
And the only reason source available had any significance is that you could look at something and understand it. Weights are much much more opaque.
It's just freeware.
I'm willing to bet a nonzero amount of its training material is GPL, so I'll treat it as GPL licensed instead and use it however the fuck I want.
If AI labs get to ignore licenses, so do we.
> I'm willing to bet a nonzero amount of its training material is GPL
Image data?
> GPL licensed instead and use it however the fuck I want
GPL is not a "use it however the fuck I want" license. Maybe you're thinking of the WTFPL?
It's not going to matter unless you plan to commercially deploy the model, as far as I see.
If you were to generate outputs for commercial use, I think it would still violate this research license, but it's not like they are going to know, are they?
That said, I am disappointed that the model is not actually open-weights as I expected based on the headline.
It's not going to matter unless you plan to commercially deploy the model, as far as I see.
It's not going to matter then, either. What are they going to do, sue me for copyright infringement?
6 replies →
It could have an attempt at steganographic watermarking trained into the model.
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That seems quite important. Definitely requires any grown up company to have to do a bunch of legal paperwork to use it.
You are not wrong, but will a judge and jury be competent enough to understand the difference after you've spent several hundred thousand in litigation?
You really think Alibaba is going to go around and sue in US courts for something like this?
It’s more of something to scare companies with legal teams. If you’re an individual or hobbyist doing a side project the risk is essentially zero.
Agreed.
Was going to post about this: the last image models with Apache 2.0 license seem to be from 2025, recent Qwen models are "non-commercial use".
I love the non-commercial clauses because of how many people are using these for deceptive ads and “virtual staging” and fake social media accounts. Anything that makes those guys lives harder while still letting me make silly pictures for my kids and tapestries for my D&D campaign feel fine by me.
This achieves absolutely nothing to that end.
People can continue to use closed SOTA models to generate outputs for commercial or malicious purposes.
What this research license achieves is that we cannot use this model in applications we publish.
You think they care about the probably unenforceable license terms?
Companies can use llm to license-wash open source code regardless of license.
How difficult would it be to use this model to create a second model without licensing issues?
Why would you even do that? Just... use it? There hasn't been any legal precedent on if models can even be copyright restricted. Labs just keep publishing license documents as if they matter.
2 replies →
What.
What are the top image models that still use a less restrictive license today?
Boogu-Image has the Apache 2.0 License [1] (good coherence, but outputs can look synthetic).
And Krea 2 has a community license [2] that is fairly permissive - I think commercial usage is allowed under $1 million.
Boogu-Image scored 6/15 and Krea 2 scored 7/15 on my GenAI Showdown benchmark [3] - only Ideogram4 eclipses them in terms of local models, but its got a far more restrictive license and the JSON structured inputs can be a pain to work with.
[1] - https://github.com/Boogu-Project/Boogu-Image
[2] - https://www.krea.ai/krea-2-licensing
[3] - https://genai-showdown.specr.net/?models=fd,hd,kd,qi,f2d,zt,...
Tune the weights a bit and call them derivative work.