Open source licensing revolutionized software development, creating a thriving ecosystem built on shared innovation and collaboration. Licenses like MIT and Apache-2.0 gave developers a standard, legally robust way to share code, reducing friction and accelerating adoption.

Today, we stand at a similar inflection point with open AI models. These models, increasingly foundational to research and industry, lack an equivalent licensing standard. Existing open source software licenses weren’t designed with AI models in mind, while most model-specific licenses are either too complex, overly restrictive, or legally ambiguous.

To fully unlock the potential of open AI, we need a license purpose-built for the realities of machine learning. That’s where OpenMDW comes in.

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