OpenRoots

ORD-2.2

An AI model provider offering it as a hosted service, under ORD 2.2

Trains, fine-tunes, or serves machine learning models commercially. Third parties access the Work as a service you operate. This resolves to the Canopy tier.

Tier

Canopy

Owed

0.5% of revenue attributable to products or services that depend on the Work, capped at $250,000 per year, plus a quarterly Canopy Report.

Sections in play

1.13, 1.8, 1.9, 3.1, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 5.1, 5.2

Who and what

The situation being resolved.

Actor

An AI model provider

Trains, fine-tunes, or serves machine learning models commercially.

over 2M USD

Situation

Offering it as a hosted service

Third parties access the Work as a service you operate.

Rulings

4 questions resolved against the text.

clear

Which tier applies?

Canopy. Trains, fine-tunes, or serves machine learning models commercially. Section 5.2 reporting applies; the Section 5.1 royalty attaches when the Licensee makes Production Use and only to attributable revenue.

Sections 1.8, 3.1, 5.1

clear

Is anything owed?

0.5% of revenue attributable to products or services that depend on the Work, capped at $250,000 per year, plus a quarterly Canopy Report.

Sections 5.1, 5.2

clear

Does this count as Production Use?

Yes. Third parties access the Work as a service you operate. Section 1.9 covers internal operation at operating scope and systems made available externally to customers or the public. Development, testing, evaluation, research, and personal non-revenue use remain outside it.

Sections 1.9

conditional

Is this a Competing Offering?

Yes if the value derives entirely or substantially from the Work itself. Section 4 applies to every Licensee, including Root. A larger independent product remains allowed, but selling, porting, repackaging, hosting, or redistributing the Work as the product requires a separate written agreement.

Sections 1.13, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3

Cautions

What this situation gets wrong most often.

  • Section 8.3 of ORD requires a withdrawal of consent to propagate to any derivative you have distributed. Whether that is operationally achievable at depth is a published open question.

Same actor

Other situations for this party.