Alibaba, the China-based ecommerce and cloud computing company, plans to ask major commercial users of its upcoming Qwen3.8-Max AI model to share part of the revenue they generate from the model, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The new terms are expected to take effect when the model launches next week, the people said.

The move would mark a shift from Alibaba’s current Qwen licensing strategy.

Many recent Qwen releases, including the Qwen3 family, have been released under the Apache 2.0 license for commercial self-hosting, while Max and Plus variants have remained proprietary through Alibaba Cloud and application programming interface (API) access.

Moonshot‘s Kimi K3 uses a similar approach. Companies generating more than US$20 million in annual revenue from the model must negotiate a separate commercial agreement, with Moonshot reportedly taking up to 30% of revenue.

If Alibaba adopts revenue-sharing terms, the release would be better described as open-weight than Open Source Initiative-approved open source, because pay-or-negotiate terms are generally incompatible with Open Source Initiative-approved licenses.

🔗 Source: Reuters