{"id":"NVIDIA-Open-Model-License","title":"NVIDIA Open Model License Agreement","reviewed_on":"2026-09-22","reviewer":"Giray Havur","text_source":"https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/agreements/enterprise-software/nvidia-open-model-license/","text_retrieved":true,"verdict":"created","summary":"The most permissive agreement of this family, last modified on October 24, 2025. It says in its own opening that the models are commercially usable, that derivative models may be made and distributed, and that the licensor claims no ownership in outputs; the conditions are a notice file, a built-on line for one class of model, compliance with a separate set of ethics terms, and a bar on removing the safety guardrails. The record permits dalicc:patentGrant and dalicc:sellCopy, which no other record of this family does, and records the guardrail clause as a gap.","findings":[{"rubric":1,"severity":"info","field":"dct:title","description":"File name, record identifier and IRI local name agree. The agreement has no SPDX identifier, so no spdx:licenseId triple is written. dct:title is the heading of the document; the short form and the identifier are in dct:alternative.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":2,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:target","description":"dcmitype:Dataset and dcmitype:Software. The Model is defined as \"the machine learning model, software, checkpoints, learnt weights, algorithms, parameters, configuration files and documentation shared under this Agreement\": checkpoints and weights are data, the model and the software are software, and the documentation travels with both.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":3,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:permission","description":"The grant reads \"NVIDIA hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, revocable (as stated in Section 2.1) license to publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce, use, create derivative works of, make, have made, sell, offer for sale, distribute (through multiple tiers of distribution) and import the Model.\" That gives odrl:present, odrl:display, odrl:reproduce, odrl:derive, odrl:modify, cc:DerivativeWorks, dalicc:ModifiedWorks and odrl:distribute, and dalicc:sellCopy from \"sell, offer for sale\". dalicc:patentGrant is written because the grant uses the patent verbs, \"make, have made, sell, offer for sale, distribute and import\", beside the copyright ones. cc:CommercialUse is permitted because the agreement opens with \"Models are commercially usable.\" dalicc:useForModelTraining is permitted and carries a dalicc:addStatement duty, because the redistribution clause contemplates that you \"use a NVIDIA Cosmos Model or its outputs to create, train, fine tune, or otherwise improve an AI model\" and asks for the built-on line when you do. dalicc:ChangeLicense is permitted and carries dalicc:compliantLicense, from \"You may add Your own copyright statement to Your modifications and may provide additional or different license terms and conditions ... provided Your use, reproduction, and distribution of the Model otherwise complies with the conditions stated in this Agreement.\"","action":"applied"},{"rubric":4,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:prohibition","description":"Three prohibitions. dalicc:promote from \"This Agreement does not grant permission to use the trade names, trademarks, service marks, or product names of NVIDIA, except as required for reasonable and customary use in describing the origin of the Model and reproducing the content of the \"Notice\" text file.\" dalicc:patentRetaliationTermination from \"If You institute copyright or patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Model or a Derivative Model constitutes direct or contributory copyright or patent infringement, then any licenses granted to You under this Agreement for that Model or Derivative Model will terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.\" dalicc:exemptedMaterial from the separate components clause, under which bundled components \"are subject to the applicable other licenses\".","action":"applied"},{"rubric":5,"severity":"major","field":"odrl:duty","description":"Three duties on odrl:distribute, one on dalicc:useForModelTraining and one licence-wide. cc:Notice, dalicc:includeNoticeFile and dalicc:addStatement all come from the first redistribution condition: \"If you distribute the Model, You must give any other recipients of the Model a copy of this Agreement and include the following attribution notice within a \"Notice\" text file with such copies: \"Licensed by NVIDIA Corporation under the NVIDIA Open Model License\"\". dalicc:addStatement also carries the second condition, the built-on line for one class of model. The licence-wide duty is dalicc:exportControlNotice, from \"You agree to comply with all applicable export, import, trade and economic sanctions laws and regulations\", which is written as a general obligation rather than a condition of distribution. cc:Attribution is not written: the agreement asks for the notice file and the built-on line, not for the retention of existing credit.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":6,"severity":"minor","field":"dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer","description":"The disclaimer clause goes to dalicc:WarrantyDisclaimer and the limitation clause to dalicc:LiabilityLimitation, each whole and verbatim. dalicc:additionalClauses carries the opening notice, the parties and confirmations, the definitions, the conditions for use, the licence grant, the ownership clause, the redistribution clause, the separate components clause, the trademark clause, the indemnity and feedback clauses, the governing law and trade compliance clauses, and one literal that quotes the ethics clause and gives the address of the terms it incorporates.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":6,"severity":"minor","field":"dalicc:additionalClauses","description":"The opening notice of the document reads \"IMPORTANT NOTICE - PLEASE READ AND AGREE BEFORE USING THE NVIDIA MODELS.\" The published text has a long dash where this record has a plain hyphen; the change is recorded here and nothing else in the text was altered.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":7,"severity":"minor","field":"cc:jurisdiction","description":"cc:jurisdiction is dalicc:worldwide, from the worldwide grant, and dalicc:validityType is dalicc:perpetual, from \"a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, revocable (as stated in Section 2.1) license\". dalicc:governingLaw carries both laws the agreement names: \"This Agreement will be governed in all respects by the laws of the United States and the laws of the State of Delaware\". dalicc:terminatesOnBreach is true because \"The rights granted herein are explicitly conditioned on Your full compliance with the terms of this Agreement\" and the guardrail clause ends the rights automatically. No cure period is given.","action":"applied"},{"rubric":8,"severity":"gap","field":"dalicc:additionalClauses","description":"The guardrail clause has no term: \"If You bypass, disable, reduce the efficacy of, or circumvent any technical limitation, safety guardrail or associated safety guardrail hyperparameter, encryption, security, digital rights management, or authentication mechanism (collectively \"Guardrail\") contained in the Model without a substantially similar Guardrail appropriate for your use case, your rights under this Agreement will automatically terminate.\" dalicc:applyTechnicalProtectionMeasures is the opposite idea and was not stretched to cover it. Quoted; the proposed term is dalicc:safetyGuardrailPreservation, a duty action, or a rule action named dalicc:circumventTechnicalProtectionMeasures if the consolidation prefers to state it as a prohibition, which would also serve one other record of this family.","action":"none"},{"rubric":8,"severity":"gap","field":"dalicc:additionalClauses","description":"The agreement may be changed unilaterally: \"NVIDIA may update this Agreement to comply with legal and regulatory requirements at any time and You agree to either comply with any updated license or cease Your copying, use, and distribution of the Model and any Derivative Model.\" dalicc:orLaterVersionOption is the opposite case, where the licensee chooses a later version, and is not written. Quoted; the proposed term is dalicc:unilateralLicenseUpdate, a boolean.","action":"none"},{"rubric":8,"severity":"gap","field":"dalicc:fieldOfUseRestriction","description":"The ethics terms are a separate document incorporated by reference: \"AI Ethics. Use of the Models under the Agreement must be consistent with NVIDIA's Trustworthy AI terms found at https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/agreements/trustworthy-ai/terms/.\" dalicc:fieldOfUseRestriction names the field in a short literal, but there is no term for a policy the licence pulls in by reference. The clause and the address are quoted in one literal; the proposed term is dalicc:incorporatedUsePolicy.","action":"none"},{"rubric":8,"severity":"gap","field":"dalicc:additionalClauses","description":"The output clause has no term: \"NVIDIA claims no ownership rights in outputs. You are responsible for outputs and their subsequent uses.\" Quoted; the proposed term is dalicc:outputRightsStatement, an annotation.","action":"none"},{"rubric":9,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"The consistency check of app.services.composer against dg_default returned an empty conflict list.","action":"none"},{"rubric":10,"severity":"info","field":"record","description":"Family: the permissive end of this family. It is the only one of the seventeen records that permits dalicc:sellCopy, and one of six that permit dalicc:patentGrant. Like the responsible-use group it lets the licensee relicense its own modifications with a compliant-licence duty; unlike that group its conditions of use are an incorporated ethics document and a guardrail clause rather than a printed list, and it terminates on breach. Its redistribution conditions read like the permissive software licence this library holds under a well-known identifier, with a notice file and a trademark carve-out.","action":"none"}],"family":"Model licences","port_of":null,"variant_kind":null,"variant_of":null,"notes":"Modelled from the page the publisher serves the agreement on; the retrieved copy carries the whole agreement inside the site navigation, and only the agreement was quoted. cc:legalcode and dct:source both point at that page. The clauses of this agreement carry headings but no numbers on that page, so the findings name them by heading. The Cosmos clause applies to one class of model the agreement defines rather than to every model released under it; the built-on duty is written once, on distribution, and the clause is quoted so that a reader can see which models it reaches."}