Open-source generally refers to software in which the source code is made freely available on the web for possible modification and redistribution.
AI models that call themselves open-source had existed before the emergence of DeepSeek, with Meta's Llama and Google's Gemma being prime examples in the U.S. However, some experts argue that these models aren't really open source as their licenses restrict certain uses and modifications, and their training data sets aren't public.
DeepSeek's R1 is distributed under an 'MIT License,' which Counterpoint's Sun describes as one of the most permissive and widely adopted open-source licenses, facilitating unrestricted use, modification and distribution, including for commercial purposes.