License comparison
"Open-source" covers a wide spectrum, from permissive (Apache 2.0) to source-available models with usage restrictions (Llama, Gemma). Always read the actual license text before commercial use.
| License | SPDX | Commercial | Modify | Redistribute | Attribution | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apache 2.0 ↗ | Apache-2.0 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Truly permissive. Patent grant included. Attribution and a copy of the licence required when redistributing. |
| Databricks Open Model License ↗ | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Databricks' custom open-model licence. Permits commercial use with an acceptable-use policy; separate terms for very-large-user services. |
| DeepSeek License ↗ | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Custom permissive licence allowing commercial use. Some restrictions on military and unlawful applications. |
| Falcon 2 TII License ↗ | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | TII Falcon licence, royalty-free commercial use with attribution. |
| Gemma Terms of Use ↗ | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Source-available. Commercial use permitted subject to Google's prohibited-use policy. Redistributions must include the terms. |
| Jamba Open Model License ↗ | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | AI21's open model licence. Permissive for most commercial use. |
| Llama 2 Community License ↗ | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Predecessor of Llama 3 CLA. Free commercial use unless your service exceeded 700M MAU on the date Llama 2 was released. Acceptable use policy applies. |
| Llama 3 Community License ↗ | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Source-available. Free commercial use unless your service has 700M+ monthly active users (then a separate licence required). Attribution to Meta required. |
| Llama 4 Community License ↗ | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Successor to the Llama 3 CLA. 700M-MAU threshold retained; content restrictions expanded to include specific safety categories. Attribution and licence-file preservation required. |
| MIT ↗ | MIT | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Shortest mainstream permissive licence. Attribution required, no patent grant. |
| Microsoft Research License ↗ | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Permissive Microsoft research licence. Phi-4 is released under MIT; earlier Phi-3 uses MIT as well. |
| Mistral Research License ↗ | — | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Research-only. Mistral's commercial licence is sold separately for production deployments. |
| Modified MIT (Kimi K2) ↗ | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | MIT-based with additional attribution + prominent-attribution requirements when a derivative product exceeds 100M MAU or $20M monthly revenue. |
| Qwen License ↗ | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Tongyi Qianwen licence. Permissive for most uses; 100M+ MAU threshold for separate licence. Newer Qwen2.5 weights mostly Apache 2.0. |