If you want to know whether something is truly open-source, the license tells the story. OSI-approved licenses such as GPLv3, MIT, or Apache 2.0 allow unrestricted use, modification, and redistribution. Any license that adds caveats, like prohibiting commercial use, disqualifies it from being open-source. It may still be source-available, but it doesn’t carry the same freedoms.
After a number of notable moves to make software proprietary, some companies are insisting on Open Source Initiative-approved software licenses.
“We had some trepidation about that. It turns out, our fears were maybe a little bit unfounded, not entirely unfounded, but a little unfounded. And meanwhile, we knew that there were some customers who really didn’t want to look at our technology unless it was open source, capital ‘O,’ capital ‘S,’ with an OSI-approved license,” Merrick said.
ETSI is pleased to announce it has elected three new officials to lead EUSR Working Group within TC CYBER, a standardisation working group to support the EU Cyber Resilience Act. In response to a request from the European Commission in early June of this year, ETSI is facilitating the harmonisation of cybersecurity standards for digital products across the EU. Its three new appointments, Sandra Feliciano (Chair), Dr George Sharkov (Vice-Chair), and Simon Phipps (Vice-Chair) bring a wealth of diverse expertise in standardisation, conformity assessment, SMEs and open source software development.
Stefano Maffulli, the group’s first executive director, is set to step down in October to pursue work in open-source AI and data governance. Under Maffulli’s leadership since 2021, OSI moved from a volunteer-centric group to a globally recognized nonprofit, notably releasing the Open Source AI Definition (OSAID) 1.0, which, like the name suggests, established a standard for open-source AI licensing.
At the Open Source Summit in Amsterdam, I sat down with Maffulli to talk about the current state of the discussion. He noted that not only has the conversation started but that the definition has become a tool for the OSI to engage with politicians, including the European Commission, where the AI Act, for example, will go into full effect in August 2026.
Leaving aside the Open Source Initiative (OSI) Open Source AI Definition (OSAID), which Grok doesn’t come close to meeting, the code also fails by the more broadly accepted open-source definitions.
According to our partners at the Open Source Initiative (OSI), open source AI means anyone can look at how the model works, change it, use it, and share it freely without needing to ask for permission.
“The Open Source Initiative’s core mission lies in the preservation of the freedoms and opportunities of Open Source software and Open Source AI so that they can be enjoyed by all,” said Katie Steen-James, senior U.S. policy manager at OSI. “As society faces growing questions on emerging technologies, it is crucial to be engaged with others on advocacy for the open internet to ensure the future data ecosystem encourages creativity, preserves access to knowledge, and remains open, equitable, and driven by the public interest.”
The Open Source Initiative, a nonprofit that advocates for open-source software, defines open-source AI as “a system made available under terms that grant users the freedom to use, study, modify and share [it].”
The Open Source Initiative (OSI), a nonprofit that sets the foundation for the open source software ecosystem, did the hard work to define open source decades ago. It identified 10 criteria that include free redistribution, integrity of the author’s source code and no discrimination against persons and groups, among others. These criteria are the guarantees that allow companies to use OSS without calling their legal department every time a developer installs a package.
The Carnegie Mellon University-led Open Forum for AI (OFAI) is developing an Openness in AI framework, which includes the Open Source AI Definition (OSAID) as one of its underpinnings.
According to the Open-Source Initiative, for software to be considered open, it must offer users the freedom to use the software for any purpose, to study how it works, to modify it and to share both the original and modified versions. When applied to AI, true open-source AI include model architecture (the blueprint for how the AI processes data); training data recipes (documenting how data was selected and used to train the model); and weights (the numerical values representing the AI’s learned knowledge).
