Open, but on our terms
The top of the Qwen line is downloadable for the first time — text-only, and not under Apache. Both qualifications are the strategy, and "open weights" has stopped describing one thing.
The line is drawn deliberately
The same lab shipped a 27B under Apache 2.0 with vision included days earlier. So the Max tier getting custom terms is not caution about open weights in general — it is a decision about which model competes with closed frontier labs and which model builds an ecosystem.
Text-only is the second half of the same line. Multimodality stays behind the API. Open the part that wins adoption; hold the part that wins deals.
Which makes the phrase useless
Kimi ships under its own licence, DeepSeek under its own model terms, Qwen varies per model, and only some releases are actually Apache. Two models both described as open-weight can differ on commercial use, scale thresholds, redistribution, and training on outputs.
A reader comparing benchmark scores sees none of the terms, and the terms are what decide whether you can ship.
The switching cost nobody prices
Swapping the model under a product is a legal review, not a configuration change — and it is a different review for every candidate. That is a real moat, and it is a moat built out of paperwork rather than capability.
Which is worth holding next to the interface layer converging. Technically the models are becoming interchangeable. Legally they are becoming less so. Those two trends point in opposite directions and the legal one is winning.
Two futures
One where this resolves into a handful of standard forms, the way software licensing eventually did. One where every lab keeps bespoke terms permanently, because bespoke terms are exactly how you capture value from something you gave away.
Nothing in the current field distinguishes them, and the incentive points at the second.
OrcaRouter — Qwen3.8-27B Open Weights: Max Shipped, 27B Delayed → · GEO Toolbox — Chinese AI Models Compared: DeepSeek, Qwen, GLM, Kimi (2026) → · hidekazu-konishi.com — Open-Weights LLM Release History and Timeline →