Apache 2.0
One of the most permissive open-source licenses in the industry. It allows free use, modification and distribution of the software, including for commercial purposes, does not require derivative works to be released under the same license, and includes a patent grant clause.
Core Facts
The MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses permit commercial use and closed-source modifications, the GPL requires derivative works to also be open-sourced, and the AGPL requires open-sourcing even when software is provided as a service over a network.
Both the MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses explicitly permit commercial use, modification, and redistribution.
Gemma 4 adopts the Apache 2.0 license, allowing completely unrestricted commercial use
Timeline (last 90 days)
JetBrains has open-sourced an agent IDE called ThinkRail on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 license.
After Willison open-sourced Battle Drones under the Apache 2.0 license, a developer released a steampunk-style fork called Panache based on it the very next day.
Common permissive licenses such as MIT and Apache 2.0 allow users to use the code with almost no restrictions, including for commercial purposes, requiring only that the copyright notice be retained.
OpenShell is fully open source under the Apache 2.0 license.
The Papers with Code website was officially open-sourced under the Apache 2.0 license.
Mainstream open-source licenses (such as Apache 2.0 and MIT) usually include disclaimer clauses and provide no guarantee of output quality or legality.
Nanbeige4.3-33B uses the Apache 2.0 license.
The Apache 2.0 license covers the model code and weights; copyright and privacy compliance of the training data itself still need to be assessed separately.
Carbon-X uses the Apache 2.0 license.
Sandbox Runtime is open source under the Apache 2.0 license.
40 more timeline events
All Facts (20)
The MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses permit commercial use and closed-source modifications, the GPL requires derivative works to also be open-sourced, and the AGPL requires open-sourcing even when software is provided as a service over a network.
75%VerifiedBoth the MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses explicitly permit commercial use, modification, and redistribution.
75%VerifiedGemma 4 adopts the Apache 2.0 license, allowing completely unrestricted commercial use
75%VerifiedSome of Mistral's models use the Apache 2.0 license, allowing fully commercial use.
70%VerifiedBoth Kubernetes and TensorFlow adopt the Apache 2.0 open-source license.
70%VerifiedApache 2.0 is an OSI-approved open source license that permits commercial use, modification, redistribution and closed-source derivatives, requires only that copyright and license notices be retained, includes a patent grant clause, and sets no revenue threshold.
65%VerifiedOpen-source licenses range from permissive to restrictive, including Apache 2.0, MIT, and custom community licenses defined by individual companies, the latter of which often impose restrictions on commercial-scale use and similar areas; Meta's Llama series and some of Mistral's earlier models have adopted custom licenses with additional conditions.
65%VerifiedThe MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses permit commercial use and closed-source modifications, while the GPL family requires that derivative works also be open-sourced.
65%VerifiedThe Apache 2.0 license allows users to freely use, modify, distribute, and commercialize models, with the only major requirement being to retain the original copyright notice and license text; it is more permissive than the community license previously used by the Meta Llama series, which imposed additional restrictions on companies with over 700 million monthly active users.
65%VerifiedQwen3.8-27B is licensed under Apache 2.0, fully free for commercial use, with no additional commercial use restrictions.
65%VerifiedQwen3.8-27B adopts open weights and the Apache 2.0 license.
65%VerifiedOpen-source models are typically released under Apache 2.0, MIT, or custom licenses that allow commercial use and modification, and operate under a different regulatory framework from hardware export controls.
65%VerifiedThe Apache 2.0 license contains an explicit patent grant clause (Section 3), whereby contributors automatically grant users the right to use relevant patents upon publishing their code.
65%VerifiedThe Apache 2.0 and MIT licenses are jointly ranked as the two most enterprise-friendly open-source options, with Apache 2.0 additionally providing patent grant clauses.
65%VerifiedSim Studio adopts the Apache 2.0 open-source license.
65%VerifiedGemini CLI is hosted on GitHub and uses the Apache 2.0 open-source license.
65%VerifiedDeepSeek open-sourced the inference framework DeepInfer on October 20, providing optimized operators, multi-card parallelism and asynchronous scheduling capabilities for V4.1 Flash, under the Apache 2.0 license.
80%Unverifiedpi-plugin-cc采用Apache 2.0许可证，允许在商业产品中自由使用、修改和分发
90%UnverifiedQwen 3.8 is a dense model using the Apache 2.0 license, with all 27.7B parameters fully activated.
60%UnverifiedMistral 7B uses the Apache 2.0 license and is widely regarded as closer to true open source in the genuine sense
60%