COURSE 25Beginner9 IN-DEPTH LESSONS

Open Source, Vendors and Ecosystem

Navigating the industry landscape: open weights vs open source, software and model licenses, API service terms, hosting trade-offs, and portability.

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Course Syllabus & Units

Unit 1

Overview

1 lessons
1.1L1

Open source and vendors

The AI ecosystem mixes **downloadable weights**, **hosted APIs**, and **proprietary stacks**. “Open” is a spectrum: OSI’s Open Source AI Definition asks for freedoms to use, study, modify, and share—with preferred forms for modification ...

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Unit 2

Licenses

1 lessons
2.1L1

Reading model licenses

How to read **licenses and terms** for model weights, code, and data: what you may use, modify, redistribute, and commercialize. This chapter is **literacy, not legal advice**—ask counsel for product decisions. <!-- IMAGE: checklist: lic...

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Unit 3

Cards

1 lessons
3.1L1

Model cards in practice

Writing and reading **model cards** that document intended use, data, metrics, limits, and ethical considerations. On Hugging Face Hub, the card’s metadata also carries the **license identifier** others rely on when scanning repositories...

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Unit 4

Exit

1 lessons
4.1L1

Exit plans and portability

How to avoid lock-in: export data, abstract vendors, keep eval harnesses portable, and practice failover. Service terms and product SKUs change; portability is risk management, not paranoia. <!-- IMAGE: app → interface → provider A/B wit...

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Unit 5

Hosting

1 lessons
5.1L1

Hosting tradeoffs

Comparing **hosted APIs**, **managed endpoints** (e.g., Bedrock-style model hosting), and **self-hosting open weights**—ops burden vs control. Terms and data-use rules differ by lane (paid vs unpaid Gemini quotas; Bedrock abuse detection...

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Unit 6

Api Terms

1 lessons
6.1L1

Reading API service terms

A **literacy** method for reading vendor **service terms**, privacy centers, and product-term updates that govern hosted AI APIs. This is **not legal advice**. Primary docs change—**always re-read the current URL and note the date**. <!-...

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Unit 7

Open Definition

1 lessons
7.1L1

OSI Open Source AI Definition

The **Open Source Initiative’s Open Source AI Definition (OSAID) 1.0** states when an AI system qualifies as **Open Source AI**—not merely when weights are downloadable. Core freedoms: use for any purpose; study/inspect components; modif...

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Unit 8

Weight Licenses

1 lessons
8.1L1

Weights vs code licenses

AI releases often stack **different legal instruments**: training code license, inference code license, **weight** license, dataset license, and (if hosted) API terms. Literacy goal: never assume one file covers the stack. **Not legal ad...

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Unit 9

Spdx

1 lessons
9.1L1

SPDX license identifiers

**SPDX** (Software Package Data Exchange) maintains a standard catalog of **license identifiers** used in metadata, SBOMs, and repository cards so tools can recognize licenses without parsing full legal prose. Official list: https://spdx...

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