Understanding what makes a software Free (as in freedom) has been going on since the beginning of the Free Software movement in the 80’s (at least). This led to the Free Software licenses, which help users to control the technology they use. However, considering the peculiarities of Artificial Intelligence (AI) software, one may wonder whether those licenses account for those.
Free Software licenses were designed so that users control technology, and facilitate their collaboration. Software released under a Free Software license guarantees that users can use, study, share and improve it however they want, with anybody they want. Once one accesses the source code and the accompanying license(s), he or she can run the software. Indeed, most software runs on commodity hardware. However, this is not true for AI and deep learning, the branch of AI powering most of the recent successful AI technologies.