License Clarification

[ryanrussell]

This looks like an interesting project; however, my limited understanding of your licensing appears to make the code unusable for 3rd parties.

Perhaps it's just incomplete? :)

Any chance you could clarify more around this so the community can better understand your intent and what constitutes acceptable use of the https://github.com/CompVis/stable-diffusion/ repository?

Also, would it be possible to clarify the relationship between CompVis/stable-diffusion and https://github.com/pesser/stable-diffusion (MIT license)?

Best,
Ryan

[ryanrussell]

Attached is a link to common licensing templates if it helps: https://github.com/licenses/license-templates/tree/master/templates

[rromb]

This license holds for the weights (parameters of the neural network), which are currently only available for research.
We are working on a more permissive license for the weights which we hope to release soon.
https://github.com/pesser/stable-diffusion contains developing code for https://github.com/CompVis/stable-diffusion and comes with an MIT license, but no model weights.

[ryanrussell]

@rromb Thanks for the clarification!

One question that I'm not clear on -- If a 3rd party generates an image using the code and weights from CompVis/stable-diffusion -- would you consider those output images to be an "indirect distribution of the weights"?

Basically -- Are you allowed to publish an image created with code from this repository?

It's understood that this is a young project -- please take these questions as a request for guidance; not criticism :)

Best,
Ryan

[ryanrussell]

Thanks for the awesome updates on the license @rromb !!

For readers in the future:

• License Details on GitHub
• License Details on HuggingFace
• License Blog Post on Ethics and Legal Considerations