OMLA Public License 2.1
Retired · Historical record
Free for non-commercial use. Commercial use above a revenue floor requires either releasing your derivative weights under this same license, or paying 30% of applicable revenue directly to the creators named in the model's signed manifest. Nothing is reported to OMLA, ever.
OMLA Public License — Version 2.1
Quick summary
| Area | Rule |
|---|---|
| Non-Commercial | Free — use, copy, modify, and distribute the Model and Derivatives for any purpose that does not generate revenue, including internal training and future model development for entities under the revenue floor, and published academic research at any size. |
| Commercial trigger | Any use by an entity with more than $200,000 in trailing twelve-month revenue (published academic research excepted), or any use that directly generates revenue from the Model's outputs or Derivatives. |
| Copyleft-or-pay | Once triggered, per calendar quarter: either release the Derivative's weights, training code, and data recipe under this same license within 60 days, or pay 30% of Applicable Revenue directly to the creators listed in the Registry Manifest. |
| Applicable Revenue | The greater of (a) gross revenue attributable to the Model's use, or (b) the cost of equivalent API inference at prevailing market rates — so "we made $0" is not an out if you used the model. When one output combines several licensed Models (a base model plus adapters, say), the 30% is apportioned across them, not charged again for each. |
| Suggested splits | Fine-tune 5% · quantize 2% · distill/merge 10% — suggested defaults, not caps. The split declared in the signed manifest governs; everything passed upstream flows through the lineage to the model's original creators. |
| Payment | Direct, wallet to wallet, via the payment pointer in the Registry Manifest. No reporting to OMLA — OMLA never receives usage, payer, or payment data. |
| Status | Retired. Effective 2026-08-11; OMLA ceased operations 2026-08-26. No model or company was ever listed under OMLA-PL-2.1, so no obligations were ever incurred under it. This page is preserved as a historical record. |
1. Acceptance
- This is a contract, not a copyright license. AI model weights may not be protected by copyright, so this document is not framed as one. It is a contract accepted by conduct: an offer (you may use the Model), consideration (you agree to the terms below), and acceptance (by downloading, cloning, or otherwise using the Model, you accept this License).
- Creator acceptance. A Creator accepts this License by publishing a Model's signed Manifest (Section 2.5) to the Registry under License version "OMLA-PL-2.1."
- User acceptance. Any party accepts this License by downloading, copying, modifying, or otherwise using an OMLA-PL-2.1-licensed Model. Continued use is continued acceptance.
2. Definitions
- Model: a generative AI model (weights and parameters) published under this License, regardless of modality — language, image, audio, video, code, or any other generative model. Derivative: any model that fine-tunes, quantizes, distills, merges, or is otherwise built from the Model.
- Creator: a party named in the Model's Registry Manifest as entitled to a share of royalties.
- Commercial Use: (a) any use by an entity with more than $200,000 in trailing twelve-month revenue, other than Exempt Research; or (b) any use — by any entity, regardless of size — that directly generates revenue from the Model's outputs or from a Derivative. Non-Commercial Use is any use that is neither (a) nor (b): Exempt Research, personal and hobby projects, and — for entities at or below that revenue floor — internal training, evaluation, and development of future models, so long as no revenue results. Exempt Research is academic or scientific research whose results are published or shared without charge, regardless of the researching entity's revenue.
- Applicable Revenue: for a given calendar quarter, the greater of (a) gross revenue reasonably attributable to the Model's or Derivative's use, or (b) the cost of equivalent API inference for the same workload at prevailing market rates at the time. Where a single output combines more than one Model or Derivative at generation time (for example, a base model used together with one or more independent adapters) — a Stack — Applicable Revenue for that output is apportioned across the Models in the Stack, not counted separately against each; total royalty obligations for a given output do not exceed 30% of that output's Applicable Revenue regardless of how many licensed Models contributed to it. Generation-count and declared-weight apportionment, published at /resolver.html, is one accepted method; any reasonable, consistently-applied method is acceptable.
- Registry Manifest: the signed record OMLA publishes for the Model — creator identity, license, lineage, retention split, and payment pointer. Schema at /registry.html.
- Resolver: the open, deterministic algorithm that turns a Manifest plus a revenue figure into a per-creator payment amount. Specification and implementation at /resolver.html.
- Registry: the public record of signed Manifests that OMLA publishes at omla-ai.org as signed, versioned static snapshots. Licensee: a party making Commercial Use of the Model or a Derivative.
3. Non-Commercial Grant
- Each Creator grants a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free right to use, copy, modify, and distribute the Model and Derivatives for Non-Commercial Use.
- This includes Exempt Research (published academic or scientific research, at any entity size), personal and hobby projects, and — for entities at or below the $200,000 floor — internal evaluation and training of future models not yet offered commercially.
4. Commercial Trigger
- Any Commercial Use of the Model or a Derivative triggers the obligations in Section 5 for that calendar quarter.
- The $200,000 revenue floor is measured at the entity level (the legal entity making the Commercial Use), on a trailing twelve-month basis, re-evaluated each calendar quarter. An entity that crosses the floor mid-quarter is subject to this License for that entire quarter.
- The floor does not apply to the revenue-generation prong: any entity, of any size, whose product or service directly monetizes the Model's outputs or a Derivative (for example, selling API access to it) is in Commercial Use regardless of overall company revenue.
- Commercial grant. Subject to, and conditioned on, timely compliance with Section 5, each Creator grants the Licensee a non-exclusive, non-transferable, worldwide right to use, copy, modify, and distribute the Model and Derivatives for Commercial Use during each calendar quarter for which Section 5 is satisfied.
5. Copyleft or Pay
- For each calendar quarter of Commercial Use, the Licensee must do one of the following, no later than 60 days after quarter end:
Track Requirement (a) Copyleft Publicly release the Derivative's model weights under OMLA-PL-2.1 — and its training code and data recipe under a recognized open-source or open-data license that permits reuse — no later than 60 days after the relevant quarter's end. A release under this track satisfies Section 5 for that Derivative version for that quarter and every later quarter. (b) Royalty Run the Resolver against the Model's (and its lineage's) Registry Manifests and the quarter's Applicable Revenue, and pay 30% of Applicable Revenue, split per the Resolver's output, directly to each listed Creator's payment pointer. - The choice is the Licensee's, made independently each quarter. Choosing (a) in one quarter does not obligate (a) in a later quarter, and vice versa. Where the Licensee's Commercial Use involves no Derivative (use of the unmodified Model), track (a) is unavailable and Section 5(b) applies.
- Payment under (b) is direct, Licensee to Creator, wallet to wallet. OMLA is not a party to the payment, does not process it, and receives no report, receipt, or notice that it occurred.
- If a Model has no lineage (it is an original work), 100% of the royalty in (b) goes to that Model's own Creators.
- No payment under (b) is owed to a payment pointer that stands revoked in the Registry when payment is due (see Terms of Service §6.3); the Resolver's published treatment of delisted models governs how the remaining royalty is distributed.
- Termination and cure. The Commercial grant in Section 4.4 terminates automatically if the Licensee fails to satisfy this Section 5 when due. It is reinstated if the failure is fully cured within 30 days after written notice of the failure from any affected Creator, or later at the affected Creators' discretion. Rights under Section 3 for Non-Commercial Use survive termination.
6. Derivative Splits and Suggested Retention
- Where royalty is owed under Section 5(b), the share a Derivative retains — and the share flowing upstream through its declared lineage to its parent model(s), and from there to their parents, recursively — is governed by the split declared in the Derivative's signed Manifest (
split.retain_bpandsplit.upstream). The declared split is definitive: Resolvers follow the Manifest as signed. - OMLA publishes the following suggested retained shares as community defaults. They are recommendations, not caps; a Manifest may declare any split that sums to 100%:
Relationship Suggested retained share Fine-tune 5% Quantize 2% Distill or merge 10% - Declared splits are public. Commercial users, upstream creators, and registry mirrors may take a Derivative's declared split into account in their own decisions; a Derivative retaining substantially more than the suggestion should expect that visibility.
- A lineage entry whose parent model never adopted this License (recorded with an
external:prefix inparent_id) documents provenance only. It receives no share under this License, appears in nosplit.upstreamentry, and creates no obligation to or from that parent (Section 1: this License is opt-in). - The Resolver (Section 2.6) computes the recursive flow deterministically from the published Manifests. See /resolver.html for the algorithm.
7. No Warranty; Limitation of Liability
- THE MODEL AND THIS LICENSE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS," WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. OMLA AND EACH CREATOR DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, INCLUDING ANY WARRANTY THAT A REGISTRY MANIFEST, LINEAGE DECLARATION, OR RESOLVER OUTPUT IS ACCURATE.
- OMLA is not a money transmitter, payment processor, escrow agent, or party to any settlement between a Licensee and a Creator. OMLA never holds, routes, or has knowledge of any payment made under this License.
- To the maximum extent permitted by law, neither OMLA nor any Creator is liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, or punitive damages arising from this License or the Model, and aggregate liability will not exceed the greater of amounts actually paid by the claimant under this License or $100.
- OMLA is not a party to this License, and is an intended third-party beneficiary of this Section 7 and Section 8.
8. Governing Law & Dispute Resolution
- This License is governed by the laws of the State of Washington, USA, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules, except that the Federal Arbitration Act governs the arbitration provisions below.
- Before filing arbitration or a court action, a party must first contact contact@example.org and allow 30 days to attempt informal resolution.
- Disputes not resolved informally are resolved by binding individual arbitration under the American Arbitration Association's rules, seated in Washington State. The parties waive class actions and jury trials to the extent permitted by law. A party may instead bring an individual claim in small-claims court.
- Consumers in jurisdictions with non-waivable consumer-protection rights (including the EU, EEA, and UK) retain those rights notwithstanding this section.
9. General Terms
- Effective date. This License is operative as of 2026-08-11. The canonical artifact is published at
https://omla-ai.org/license.html. Its SHA-256 digest is published in the site configuration for independent verification. OMLA ceased operations on 2026-08-26. No Model was ever published to the Registry under this License. - Versioning. Future versions are not retroactive to Commercial Use already governed by an earlier accepted version.
- English controls. Any translation is provided for convenience only; the English text governs.
- Entire agreement. This License is the entire agreement between the Creators and the Licensee on its subject matter. Use of the omla-ai.org website and Registry is separately governed by the OMLA Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
- Severability. If a provision of this License is held unenforceable in a jurisdiction, it is interpreted as narrowly as needed to be enforceable there, and the remainder of the License stays in effect.
10. Contact
Questions, legal matters, and license comments: contact@example.org
OMLA is the Open Model Licensing Association, an open initiative organizing as a nonprofit in the State of Washington, USA; 501(c) status is in progress.
Version 2.1 — Retired · Historical record. Translations are provided for convenience; the English version governs.