model licensing
The legal terms under which a model can be used—commercial, non-commercial, research-only, personal-use, etc.
Think of it like
A software license but for the model weights themselves—defines who can do what with them.
Example
Llama 2 is open-source but restricted: not for competing with Meta. Mistral is fully open. GPT is proprietary (license only to use via API).
How it actually works
Model licensing is a minefield. Some licenses restrict commercial use, some restrict creating competing models, some are vague about derived works. There's no standard. You need to check before deploying: can you use it for your use case, can you fine-tune, can you sell services built on it?
For product teams
Critical for legal compliance; affects which models you can use and how.
For engineers
Determines whether you can self-host, fine-tune, or redistribute.
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