❯ Reuters: Alibaba’s Next-Gen Qwen Open-Source Model to Charge Heavy Commercial Users a Revenue Share

OPEN-SOURCE FEESReuters reports that Alibaba plans to require large commercial users of the Qwen3.8-Max open-weight edition to pay a revenue share, with the policy launching in tandem with the open-source release — which could come as soon as next week. The exact share percentage is still under negotiation and not yet finalized. Previously, the company only charged for cloud-hosted deployments; the weights themselves were free to take.

MOONSHOT COMPARISONThe reference point is clear: per Reuters, Kimi K3’s license terms require any party selling the model as a service with annual revenue exceeding $20 million to sign a separate commercial agreement with Moonshot AI; under certain arrangements, the revenue share can reach as high as 30%. Since going open-source in 2023, the Qwen family has ranked at the top of Chinese open-source models by cumulative downloads — precisely because commercial use was free.

BRAND REWRITEChina’s two major open-weight suppliers have shifted to the same monetization approach within the same month, rewriting the “free open source” signboard into licenses with revenue thresholds. The ones who need to redo their math are the companies packaging open-source models directly into sellable products: the models cost nothing, but the better they sell, the more they owe. Going forward, these companies must factor the revenue share into their gross-margin models and decide whether to keep building on open weights or simply return to pay-per-call APIs.

▪ SIGNALOpen source is still open source — it’s just no longer free for those making money from it.