---
title: "Responsible-AI licence (OpenRAIL)"
description: "A licence that grants open, royalty-free access to an AI artefact while attaching prohibited uses that every redistribution and derivative must carry forward."
canonical: https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/responsible-ai-licence-openrail
author: "Jorge García Aibar"
license: "CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)"
doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22956197
version: "0.5.0"
updated: 2026-09-24
---

# Responsible-AI licence (OpenRAIL)

A licence that grants open, royalty-free access to an AI artefact while attaching prohibited uses that every redistribution and derivative must carry forward [1]. The restrictions travel with the model, so a deployer's own terms of use must repeat them.

- Developed in: [ch. 15, Open-weight licences](https://aigovernanceengineer.com/bok/governing-deployment#open-weight-licences)
- Chapters: [ch. 15, Deployment](https://aigovernanceengineer.com/bok/governing-deployment)
- Contrast with: [Open-weight model](https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/open-weight-model)
- In the glossary chapter: https://aigovernanceengineer.com/bok/glossary#t-responsible-ai-licence-openrail

## Sources

[1] "OpenRAIL: Towards open and responsible AI licensing frameworks" (use-based restrictions that redistributions and derivatives must carry). Hugging Face. 2022-08-31. https://huggingface.co/blog/open_rail (verified: primary)