Maybe Meta's Llama claims to be open source because of the EU AI act

Summary

Maybe Meta’s Llama claims to be open source because of the EU AI act 19th April 2025 I encountered a theory a while ago that one of the reasons Meta insist on using the term “open source” for their Llama models despite the Llama license not actually conforming to the terms of the Open Source Definition is that the EU’s AI act includes special rules for open source models without requiring OSI compliance. Since the EU AI act (12 July 2024) is available online I decided to take a look for myself. Here’s one giant HTML page containing the full text of the act in English. I checked the token count with ttok (which uses the OpenAI tokenizer, but it’s close enough to work as a good estimate for other models): curl 'https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=OJ:L_202401689' | ttok 241,722 tokens. That should fit nicely into Gemini 2.5 Flash (or GPT-4.1 or Gemini 2.5 Pro). My Gemini API key was playing up so I ran it via OpenRouter (and llm-openrouter) instead: llm -f 'https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=OJ:L_202401689' \ -m openrouter/google/gemini-2.5-flash-preview:thinking \ -s 'Summary of mentions of open source here, including what the document defines open source to mean' Here’s the full answer. Relevant extract: Recital (89) states that third parties making accessible “tools, services, processes, or AI components other than general-purpose AI models” under a free and open-source licence should not be mandated to comply with upstream provider responsibilities towards those who integrate them. It also encourages developers of such resources to implement documentation practices like model cards and data sheets to promote trustworthy AI. Recital (102) acknowledges that software and data, including models, released under a free and open-source licence can contribute to research and innovation and provide growth opportunities. I tracked down Recital 89 and Recital 102 to check. Sure enough, 89 says: Third parties making accessible to the ...