Open Source Initiative: Open Source AI Definition for Models

Defining openness for AI systems

The Open Source Initiative is a California public benefit corporation with 501(c)(3) status, founded in 1998. Its stewardship of the Open Source Definition includes license review, education and advocacy. Its AI contribution is a definition of openness for systems whose behavior depends on training information and learned parameters as well as source code. [1][2]

On October 28, 2024, OSI released Open Source AI Definition 1.0. It specifies freedoms to use, study, modify and share, with access to data information, training and running code, and parameters. Its data-information requirement calls for enough detail to build a substantially equivalent system; it does not require publishing every training datum. This is a community definition, not binding legislation or a license automatically applied to any model. Rights in a particular codebase, dataset or set of weights still depend on that artifact's terms. [2][3]