State your model license in plain words

The name of a license is not the answer

A buyer reading a model page wants to know what they are allowed to do with the model, and a license name does not tell them. Say it in plain words beside the name: whether commercial use is allowed, whether there is a size or revenue threshold, whether outputs may train another model, whether a fine-tuned copy may be shared, and what attribution is owed. Date the statement, link the full text, and say that the full text governs. This is a summary for buyers, not legal advice, and it should say so.

A page that only names the license gets halfway. Where the license is a custom one with the model's own name in the title, linked as a long document, the buyer's lawyer will read it eventually. The engineer choosing a shortlist may not, and may skip the model.

Custom licenses multiply the reading

A well-known permissive license is something an engineer may recognise on sight. A custom license is new reading every time, even when it differs from a familiar one by a single clause. That clause may be the reason the custom license exists, so the buyer has to find it, and the page should point to it.

Point to it. If your license is close to a familiar one but adds a use restriction, a user threshold, or a requirement to show a name in the product, write the difference in a sentence. A restriction found before integration costs the buyer a decision; one found after a month of integration work costs them the month.

A version number on the license helps too. Custom licenses get revised, and a buyer who checked the first version needs to know whether the one attached to your newer model changed anything they rely on.

The questions that decide a shortlist

From the buyer's side, the list is short and repetitive. May I use this in a product I charge for? Is there a point, in users or revenue, where I need a separate agreement? May I use outputs to train or distil a model of my own? May I publish a fine-tuned version, and under what name? Must I show your name or the license text to my users? Are some uses banned outright, and where is that list?

Each of those has a short answer for any given license. Write the answers as statements, one per line, in the same order on every model you publish, so a buyer comparing your models can read across them. Where the answer is that it depends, say on what.

Thresholds and use restrictions, written so they can be checked

A threshold is an easy clause to miss. If permission changes above a number of monthly users, or a level of revenue, put the number and the unit in the summary, and say what happens when a buyer crosses it: a separate agreement, a notice, or a fee. A threshold described as large scale is useless to a startup trying to decide whether it applies to them next year.

Use restrictions work the same way. If the license refers to an acceptable use policy, link that policy separately and say in a line what kind of use it bars. If the policy can change without a new license version, say that too, because it means a use allowed today may not be allowed later, and a buyer building a product on the model needs to know before they start.

Weights and API access are different grants

A lab that publishes weights and also sells the same model through an API may be granting different things through each. The weights come under the model license. API use comes under terms of service, which may forbid things the weights license allows, or the reverse. Having read one, a buyer can easily assume it covers the other.

Say which document applies to which route, on the model page itself. Hosts that serve your weights will be asked the same question by their buyers, and a clear sentence on your page is one they can copy. Where they copy a wrong summary, the confusion arrives at your support desk.

Fine-tuned copies raise the same question a step further. A buyer who fine-tunes your weights and serves the result wants to know whether their own customers inherit your license, your terms, or neither. One sentence on the page settles a question that otherwise reaches you as a ticket from somebody else's customer.

Keep it next to the model and keep it dated

Licenses change between versions, and sometimes between the release of weights and a later point release. Put the plain-words summary on each model's own page, with the date it was last checked against the full text, rather than on a single legal page for the whole catalogue. A buyer comparing an old version with a new one then sees a difference in permissions as plainly as a difference in context length.

Every fact on this site's model listings carries the page it was read from and when. A license summary with its own date on your page is a statement we and others can attribute to you, and it shows up as yours. How we read and date a value is written down.

This sits beside the other facts buyers filter on, covered in how buyers find a new model. A model can lose a shortlist on its license as easily as on its price.