How to read an “open” license in ten minutes

In short: “Open” on a model page is not a legal status. It is a headline. The license is the product. You can read the dangerous parts in ten minutes if you know which verbs to hunt.

The pass

1. Use — Can you run it at all, including internally?
2. Modify — Can you fine-tune, distill, merge, or is that a trapdoor?
3. Serve — Can you put it behind an API for other people?
4. Sell — Can a company whose name is not the lab’s make money?
5. Output — Do they claim your generations? Your data?

If any of those is “only with permission” or “not if you compete with us,” write it down in plain language. That sentence is the story. The rest is atmosphere.

What people confuse

• Weights on a page ≠ a factory. You still need a cluster.
• Research-only is not a gift to startups. It is a brochure.
• Copyleft vs field-of-use bans — one shares. The other draws a map of who is allowed to exist.

We covered a drop that called itself open and blocked the commercial uses most startups need. This is the method behind that judgment. Use it on the next one.

What to ignore

Parameter counts. Leaderboard screenshots. The word “democratize” in the first paragraph.

Bottom line

If you cannot serve it, sell what you built on it, or leave with your fine-tune, you did not receive openness. You received access, on terms, until the terms move.

That can still be useful. It should not be allowed to wear the other word.