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What’s Open Source AI?
Following the same idea behind Open Source Software,
an Open Source AI is a system made available under terms that grant users the freedoms to:
Use the system for any purpose and
without having to ask for permission.
Precondition to exercise these freedoms is to have access to
the preferred form to make modifications to the system, and to the means to use it.
Study how the system works and
understand how its results were created.
Precondition to exercise these freedoms is to have access to
the preferred form to make modifications to the system, and to the means to use it.
Modify the system for any purpose,
including to change its output.
Precondition to exercise these freedoms is to have access to
the preferred form to make modifications to the system, and to the means to use it.
Share the system for others to use with
or without modifications, for any purpose.
Precondition to exercise these freedoms is to have access to
the preferred form to make modifications to the system, and to the means to use it.
Benefits of Open Source AI
Transparency & Safety
Open Source AI provides information essential for auditing systems and to mitigate bias, ensures accountability and transparency of data sources, and accelerates AI safety research.
Competition & Polyculture
Open Source AI makes more models available, spurs innovation and quality due to increased competition and tackles AI monoculture by providing more stakeholders access to foundational technology.
Diverse Applications
Open Source AI gives developers access to resources crucial for developing context-specific, localized applications that are representative of cultural and linguistic diversity and allow for model aligned with different value systems.
Read the white paper
The Open Source Initiative and Open Future have taken a significant step toward addressing this challenge by releasing this white paper. The document is the culmination of a global co-design process, enriched by insights from a vibrant two-day workshop held in Paris in October 2024.
Why Open Source AI needs a definition?
Open Source Frontier
The traditional view of Open Source code and licenses when applied to AI components are not sufficient to guarantee the freedoms to use, study, share and modify the systems.
Informing Regulators
Government regulations have begun in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere. Communities need a common understanding to educate policy makers.
Combat Openwashing
Companies are calling AI systems “Open Source” even though their licenses contain restrictions that go against the accepted principles and freedoms of Open Source.
Who’s behind the Open Source AIDefinition
Overall process
0Supporting Organizations
0Supporting Individuals
0Co-designers
0Systems reviewed
Representation in the co-design process
0Nationalities
0People Of Color
0Global South
0Femme, Trans, & Nonbinary
Endorsements
2024 – 2025
Late 2024 into 2025, the OSI is
gathering endorsements from
various individuals and
organizations, including Mozilla,
Suse, Eleuther AI, Ai2, Eclipse
Foundation, and the OpenInfra
Foundation, among many others.
Which AI systems comply with the OSAID 1.0?
As part of our validation and testing of the OSAID, the volunteers checked whether the Definition could be used to evaluate if AI systems provided the freedoms expected. The list of models that passed the Validation phase are:
Pythia (Eleuther AI), OLMo (AI2), Amber and CrystalCoder (LLM360), and T5 (Google).
There are a couple of others that were analyzed and would probably pass if they changed their licenses/legal terms: BLOOM (BigScience), Starcoder2 (BigCode), Falcon (TII).
Those that have been analyzed and don’t pass because they lack required components and/or their legal agreements are incompatible with the Open Source principles:
Llama2 (Meta), Grok (X/Twitter), Phi-2 (Microsoft), Mixtral (Mistral).
These results should be seen as part of the definitional process, a learning moment; they’re not certifications of any kind. OSI will continue to validate only legal documents, and will not validate or review individual AI systems, just as it does not validate or review software projects.
If you are wondering about Open Weights models, please refer to our dedicated page.
The OSAID co-design process was open to everyone interested in collaborating.Open Source AI Definition Governance
Governance for the Open Source AI Definition is provided by the OSI Board of Directors. The OSI board members have expertise in business, legal, and open source software development, as well as experience across a range of commercial, public sector, and non-profit organizations. Formal progress reports including achievements, budget updates, and next steps are provided monthly by the Program Lead for advice and guidance as part of regular Board business. Additionally, informal updates on the outcomes of key meetings and milestones are provided via email to the Board as required.
Supported by
OSI’s efforts wouldn’t be possible without the support of our sponsors and thousands of individual members.
Become a sponsor or join us today!
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