LicensesAll docs
Licenses
The license table, how each verdict is reached, how custom and non-commercial licenses are handled, and what we refuse.
If Hugging Face lists a model, Freeweights lists it. The license decides how: Hosted (signed), with a signed manifest, when it allows copies with no acceptance gate and no territory limit; otherwise From the publisher, a link to the publisher's page with the reason. The table is a draft that counsel reviews.
The license table#
This table is generated from policy/licenses.json in the public repo. The build scripts, the classifier and this page all read the same file.
| Verdict | What happens | Licenses |
|---|---|---|
| Permissive | Hosted: listed with a signed manifest. No click-through. | Apache License 2.0 (apache-2.0), BSD 2-Clause License (bsd-2-clause), BSD 3-Clause License (bsd-3-clause), CC0 1.0 Universal (cc0-1.0), Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (cc-by-4.0), Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (cc-by-sa-4.0), ISC License (isc), MIT License (mit), Mozilla Public License 2.0 (mpl-2.0), Open Data Commons Attribution License 1.0 (odc-by), Open Data Commons Attribution License 1.0 (odc-by-1.0), The Unlicense (unlicense) |
| Custom terms (hosted) | Hosted: listed with a signed manifest. The license allows copies with no acceptance gate and no territory limit; its terms show on the entry, and the commands stay folded until you open them after reading the license. | CreativeML Open RAIL++-M (openrail++), LFM Open License v1.0 (lfm1.0), LicenseRef-GLM-5.3 , LicenseRef-Kimi-K3.1-Pro , LicenseRef-LTX-2.x-Community , LicenseRef-Qwen-Community-1.0 , OpenMDW-1.1 |
| Gated (link only) | From the publisher: the license needs you to accept it at the source. Listed with a link; Freeweights never hosts a copy. | DINOv3 License (licenseref-dinov3) *, Gemma Terms of Use (gemma), Llama 2 Community License (llama2), Llama 3.1 Community License (llama3.1), Llama 3.2 Community License (llama3.2), Llama 3.3 Community License (llama3.3), Llama 4 Community License (llama4), Meta Llama 3 Community License (llama3) |
| Territory-limited (link only) | From the publisher: the license covers only some countries, and a worldwide hub cannot limit who downloads. Listed with a link; Freeweights never hosts a copy. | LicenseRef-MiniMax-H3-Community , LicenseRef-MiniMax-H3-Image-Community , LicenseRef-Tencent-Hunyuan-Community * |
| Non-commercial (link only) | From the publisher: non-commercial use only. Listed with a link; Freeweights never hosts a copy. | Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 (cc-by-nc-2.0), Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 (cc-by-nc-3.0), Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 (cc-by-nc-4.0), Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 (cc-by-nc-nd-4.0), Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 (cc-by-nc-sa-3.0), Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 (cc-by-nc-sa-4.0), LicenseRef-Fish-Audio-Research , LicenseRef-FLUX-Kommunity-1.0 , LicenseRef-FLUX-Non-Commercial , LicenseRef-FLUX.1-dev-Non-Commercial (licenseref-flux-1-dev-non-commercial) , LicenseRef-MiniMax-Community , LicenseRef-Qwen-Research , LicenseRef-SAI-NC-Community , LicenseRef-TimesFM-Non-Commercial-1.0 (licenseref-timesfm-non-commercial) |
| License not reviewed (link only) | From the publisher: no person has read this license yet. Listed with a link; read the license on the publisher's page. | none yet |
| Refused | Not listed. The reason goes to the public refusal log. | none yet |
A license marked * was read by a person; the rest list on the publisher's own tag with no person reading it, and the page says "license as declared by the publisher".
Terms shown on hosted entries:
- LFM Open License v1.0: LFM 1.0: commercial use only for organisations under US$10M annual revenue. Keep a copy of the license with the files.
- OpenMDW-1.1: OpenMDW 1.1: keep the agreement and the copyright notices with the files when you pass them on.
- CreativeML Open RAIL++-M: OpenRAIL++-M: the use restrictions in Attachment A pass on to you and to anyone you share the model with. Keep a copy of the license with the files.
Not reviewed yet, so listed as a link only with "License not reviewed":
openrail,creativeml-openrail-m,bigscience-openrail-m,bigscience-bloom-rail-1.0,bigcode-openrail-m: OpenRAIL licenses are not reviewed yet.gpl-3.0,lgpl-3.0,agpl-3.0: Copyleft licenses for weights are not reviewed yet.cc-by-nd-4.0: No-derivatives licenses are not reviewed yet.other: Matched by the hash of its text or the declared license name; otherwise not reviewed.- Any other license id or license text no person has read, and a base model that declares no license.
- Any repo Hugging Face marks gated is link only, whatever its license.
- No license declared: refused.
- 4 license texts a person has read are matched by the sha256 of the text.
How a verdict is reached#
Every entry records how its license verdict was reached, in audit.method:
| Method | Meaning |
|---|---|
tag | The publisher's own license tag is on the table. No person read it. The page says "license as declared by the publisher". |
text-hash | The license text has the same sha256 as a text a person already read. |
inherited | The base model's verdict is stricter, so it applies. |
reviewed | A person read this repo's license and recorded the result. |
queue | No person has read this license yet. Listed as a link only: "License not reviewed. Read it on the publisher's page." Repos that ship the same text are decided together later. |
The strictest verdict along base model, fine-tune and quantization wins. A quantization of a refused base model is refused, whatever its own tag says.
Custom licenses#
A custom or community license (for example a model-specific license) is allowed only after:
- A person reads it once and records the result, with the sha256 of the text or the declared license name.
- The model page shows the license and its terms before download.
- The license lets a third party redistribute with no acceptance gate and no territory limit. If it does not, we link to the source only.
Hosted with terms shown on the entry: OpenMDW 1.1 (keep the agreement and copyright notices with the files), LFM 1.0 (commercial use only for organisations under US$10M annual revenue) and OpenRAIL++-M (the use restrictions in Attachment A pass on to you). The license file is one of the manifest's files when the repo has one.
The manifest records redistribution as yes, no or click-through, with the hash of the license text.
Non-commercial and restricted licenses#
A non-commercial license means link only: the page links to the source, and Freeweights never hosts a copy. A license that limits where it applies (Tencent Hunyuan community, MiniMax-H3) is link only, labelled territory-limited. Llama, Gemma and DINOv3 licenses must be accepted at the source, so they are link only, labelled gated. Other OpenRAIL licenses and GPL, LGPL and AGPL for weights are link only as not reviewed.
Always read the license yourself before you build on a model. The checks here help; they are not legal advice.
Gated repos#
A repo behind a login, an access form or an acceptance gate at the source is listed as a link only. We do not copy gated files and we do not bypass a gate. A repo that becomes gated after it was listed becomes link only.
What we refuse#
- No license at all.
- A model the content gate holds for a person (a real person's face or voice, fraud or attack tools) is not listed until a person decides.
- Pickle-only weights. See the inclusion policy for the formats we accept.
- Content banned by the content policy, whatever its license.
Every refusal is logged with model, source, license found, date and reason. The summary is on the Wanted page.
Rules for every listing#
- The license text and a checksum appear with every file.
- A license change at the source is checked on each sync. A change to a license that is off the table makes the model link only, as not reviewed.
Updated 2026-11-14.