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The original was posted on /r/stablediffusion by /u/not5 on 2024-08-19 21:48:05+00:00.
Hi all!
Andrea here, you might remember me from some product photography relighting videos and workflows.
Anyway, since I work in the genAI field, and Flux Dev seems to be the model of choice in the (pun unintended) dev's world, I thought I'd ask my lawyer a legal opinion about the license agreement, and his opinion seem to be the opposite of what the community here usually upvotes.
I thought it'd be cool to start a discussion on it, because I've seen so many opposite opinions here and on GitHub / HuggingFace / YT / Discord that I'd be happy if someone in the same position as I am wanted to share their findings as well.
THE DIFFERENCES
My lawyer's opinion:
- no commercial use of the model and outputs, regardless of article 2 (d), about outputs ownership
Community's opinion:
- no commercial use of the model for finetuning and as the backbone of a service, no commercial use of the outputs for training, because of article 2 (d), about outputs ownership
ARTICLE 2 (D) AND 1 (C)
The article in question states:
Outputs. We claim no ownership rights in and to the Outputs. You are solely responsible for the Outputs you generate and their subsequent uses in accordance with this License. You may use Output for any purpose (including for commercial purposes), except as expressly prohibited herein. You may not use the Output to train, fine-tune or distill a model that is competitive with the FLUX.1 [dev] Model.
My lawyer indicated that "except as expressly prohibited herein" can refer to article 1 (C), which states:
“Non-Commercial Purpose” means any of the following uses, but only so far as you do not receive any direct or indirect payment arising from the use of the model or its output: (i) personal use for research, experiment, and testing for the benefit of public knowledge, personal study, private entertainment, hobby projects, or otherwise not directly or indirectly connected to any commercial activities, business operations, or employment responsibilities; (ii) use by commercial or for-profit entities for testing, evaluation, or non-commercial research and development in a non-production environment, (iii) use by any charitable organization for charitable purposes, or for testing or evaluation. For clarity, use for revenue-generating activity or direct interactions with or impacts on end users, or use to train, fine tune or distill other models for commercial use is not a Non-Commercial purpose.
thus making it virtually impossible to use the outputs in any commercial way, because under (II) there is a stated potential use by commercial or for-profit entities, and in this case the only licit way to use it would be for testing, evaluation, or non commercial R&D, paving the way to license adoption if the testing yields satisfactory results.
His theory is that BFL specified the non-ownership of outputs under 2 (d) in order to a) distance themselves from unforeseeable or unwanted outputs, b) reiterate on the public domain nature of outputs, and c) making it effectively impossible to create commercially usable outputs because of article 1 (III).
The community, on the other hand, seems to be set on interpreting the whole of article 1 as a collection of definitions, and article 2 (d) as the actual license agreement. This is mostly because of a) article 2's name (License Grant), and b) (IMO) the inherent preference for a more permissive license.
As such, the community steers towards reading the license in such a way that the non-commercial use of the model only applies to the model itself and not the outputs, as if the two were separable not only theoretically but also in practice. It's this in practice that I'm having troubles reconciling.
OTHER PEOPLE'S OPINIONS
A startup I'm working with has asked their lawyers, and they're quite puzzled by the vagueness created by article 2 (d). They suggest asking BLF themselves.
Matteo (Latent Vision, or Cubiq, the dev behind IPAdapter Plus)'s latest Flux video was released without monetization, with him explaining that the license wouldn't permit monetizing the video (even if IMO, if the community's interpretation of the license agreement was correct, YT videos would fall under article 1 (c) (I), " testing for the benefit of public knowledge".
WHAT I'M DOING
For now, I'm both asking you here and writing an email to BFL hoping for some clarification on the matter. In the meantime, I'm waiting to develop further on Flux Dev just to err on the side of caution.
Did anyone in the community here ask their lawyer(s) about their opinion on this license?