License List & Commercial Guidelines
OpenCSG Community supports the following licenses when creating models and dataset repositories. To help you better understand the commercial permissions and legal boundaries of each license, the table below summarizes their Commercial Use attributes and core permissions & limitations.
Commercial Use Overview
- 🟢 Commercial Allowed: Permissive open-source license. Allows free commercialization, proprietary integration, and closed-source use, typically only requiring preservation of the original copyright notice.
- 🔴 Non-Commercial Only: Explicitly prohibits commercial use. Permitted only for personal study, non-profit academic research, and non-commercial evaluation.
- 🟡 Copyleft (Shared Source): Allows commercial use, but if you modify or distribute derivative works, the derivative source code/work must be released under the same open-source license.
- 🔵 OpenRAIL (Conditional Commercial): Responsible AI license. Allows commercialization but imposes strict ethical usage restrictions (e.g., prohibition of harmful, deceptive, or military use).
- ⚪ Custom Terms: Represents a license family or custom agreement. Commercial permissibility depends on the author's specific custom terms or authorization proof.
| Full Name | Identifier | Commercial Use | Permissions & Limitations Summary |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apache License 2.0 | apache-2.0 | 🟢 Commercial Allowed | Permissive; includes explicit patent grants; requires copyright & NOTICE preservation |
| MIT | mit | 🟢 Commercial Allowed | Highly permissive and concise; only requires preservation of copyright notice |
| Academic Free License v3.0 | afl-3.0 | 🟢 Commercial Allowed | Academic permissive license similar to BSD/Apache; includes explicit patent rights |
| Educational Community License v2.0 | ecl-2.0 | 🟢 Commercial Allowed | Modified from Apache 2.0; permissive license designed for academia and research |
| Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal | cc0-1.0 | 🟢 Commercial Allowed | Public domain dedication; completely free use without any restrictions |
| Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 | cc-by-4.0 | 🟢 Commercial Allowed | Allows commercial use, modification, and redistribution; requires attribution |
| CreativeML OpenRAIL-M | creativeml-openrail-m | 🔵 Conditional Commercial | Allows commercial use subject to Responsible AI use restrictions (prohibits harmful use) |
| Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 | cc-by-nc-4.0 | 🔴 Non-Commercial Only | Strictly prohibited for commercial use; restricted to personal & non-profit research |
| Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 | cc-by-nc-nd-3.0 | 🔴 Non-Commercial Only | Prohibits commercial use and forbids sharing modified/derivative models |
| Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 | cc-by-nc-nd-4.0 | 🔴 Non-Commercial Only | Prohibits commercial use and forbids sharing modified/derivative models |
| Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike 2.0 | cc-by-nc-sa-2.0 | 🔴 Non-Commercial Only | Prohibits commercial use; derivative works must be shared under the same license |
| Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike 3.0 | cc-by-nc-sa-3.0 | 🔴 Non-Commercial Only | Prohibits commercial use; derivative works must be shared under the same license |
| Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike 4.0 | cc-by-nc-sa-4.0 | 🔴 Non-Commercial Only | Prohibits commercial use; derivative works must be shared under the same license |
| GNU General Public License family | gpl | 🟡 Strong Copyleft | Allows commercial use, but derivative works must be open-sourced under GPL |
| GNU General Public License v2.0 | gpl-2.0 | 🟡 Strong Copyleft | Allows commercial use, but derivative or statically linked works must open source code |
| GNU General Public License v3.0 | gpl-3.0 | 🟡 Strong Copyleft | Allows commercial use; includes anti-tivoization and patent protection; requires full source release |
| GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 | agpl-3.0 | 🟡 Network Copyleft | Allows commercial use, but interacting over network (SaaS) triggers requirement to open source code |
| GNU Lesser General Public License family | lgpl | 🟡 Weak Copyleft | Dynamic linking allowed without copyleft taint; modifications to LGPL library must be open |
| GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1 | lgpl-2.1 | 🟡 Weak Copyleft | Dynamic linking allowed without copyleft taint; modifications to library must be open |
| GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 | lgpl-3.0 | 🟡 Weak Copyleft | Weak copyleft based on GPL v3; linking does not taint proprietary application code |
| Creative Commons license family | cc | ⚪ Custom Terms | Unspecified Creative Commons family; permissions depend on the specific license terms |
| Other | other | ⚪ Custom Terms | Custom or proprietary license; commercial permissions are subject to the author's custom agreement |