AI Governance Engineer
GitHub

Responsible-AI licence (OpenRAIL)

By Updated

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
Chapters
ch. 15, Deployment
Contrast with
Open-weight model
Source
1 numbered reference, listed below

Where it is used

One chapter of the Body of Knowledge uses the term. Each link opens the first section that does.

Responsible-AI licence (OpenRAIL): mentions per chapter3 mentions of the term across 1 of the 23 chapters of the Body of Knowledge; the chapters the glossary cross-references are drawn solid.Cross-referenced chapter15 Deployment: 3 mentions15 Deployment3No mentions in the other 22 chaptersSource: the Body of Knowledgev0.5.0
Responsible-AI licence (OpenRAIL): mentions per chapter3 mentions of the term across 1 of the 23 chapters of the Body of Knowledge; the chapters the glossary cross-references are drawn solid.Cross-referenced chapter000102030405060708101112131415 Deployment: 3 mentions3151617181920212223Source: the Body of Knowledge v0.5.0
Mentions per chapter How often each chapter names the term, with the chapters the glossary cross-references drawn solid. The longest bar is where to read the term in use; bars spread across many chapters mark a term that runs through the discipline.
Mentions as a table
Mentions of Responsible-AI licence (OpenRAIL) per chapter
ChapterMentionsCross-referenced
00 Preface0No
01 Definition0No
02 Why Now0No
03 Values & Principles0No
04 The Stack0No
05 Patterns0No
06 The Role0No
07 Maturity Model0No
08 Regulatory Map0No
10 Reading List0No
11 AI Defined0No
12 Governance Program0No
13 Risk Management0No
14 Development0No
15 Deployment3Yes
16 Fairness & XAI0No
17 Incidents0No
18 EU AI Act0No
19 Privacy & AI0No
20 Existing Law0No
21 AI Laws Worldwide0No
22 Principles & Standards0No
23 AI Agents0No
  • Deployer

    Under the EU AI Act, whoever uses an AI system under its own authority, other than in a purely personal, non-professional activity.

Sources

  1. [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)

Definitions of legal terms paraphrase the cited text, which governs. Dated statements are as of .

Cite this term

García Aibar, J. (2026). Responsible-AI licence (OpenRAIL). In AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis & Body of Knowledge (v0.5.0), Glossary. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22956197. https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/responsible-ai-licence-openrail. CC BY 4.0

BibTeX

@misc{aige2026responsibleailicenceopenrail,
  author  = {Jorge García Aibar},
  title   = {{Responsible-AI licence (OpenRAIL)}},
  note    = {Glossary, AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis \& Body of Knowledge, version 0.5.0},
  year    = {2026},
  doi     = {10.5281/zenodo.22956197},
  url     = {https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/responsible-ai-licence-openrail}
}