Open vs Closed Weights

“Open” is a spectrum, not a switch: what weights availability actually grants, what the license fine print takes back, and the trade that decides deployments.

Content last verified 2026-09.

Lessons

1. What “Open” Means
2. The License Fine Print
3. The Trade

Sources

• Llama 4 Community License Agreement (Meta)
• Gemma Terms of Use (Google)
• Mistral AI models overview — license tier per model
• gpt-oss-120b model card (OpenAI)
• Mitchell et al. (2018) — Model Cards for Model Reporting