Operating Statement

Who we are#

Freeweights is a project of Allternit, an American company. Today the owner is Allternit LLC. We plan to hand the commons to a nonprofit steward. That nonprofit does not exist yet, and we do not name one until it does.

The code that runs Freeweights is open source: the hub, the site, the tools and the specs. It does not include the Allternit apps. The planned code license is Apache-2.0, confirmed before launch.

Contact: freeweights@allternit.com.

Mission#

Freeweights keeps open AI models open. Anyone can find, check and download them for free, with no account. Allternit, an American company, runs it in the open. The code is open source and the costs are public. Freeweights is subsidized: supporters, sponsors, mirror hosts and a share of Allternit's revenue pay for it.

We always#

We never#

What we host and never host#

Allowed. All open model types: language, vision, speech, image, embedding and others. Each needs a license on the allow-list and a checksum for every file. Abliterated models, with the what-changed card. File formats at Stage 0: safetensors, GGUF and MLX (and ONNX, which is data only). No pickle-based files. General speech models, such as Kokoro, that do not copy one real person.

Banned. We never list or host:

1. A model made for sexual content. Not now, not later.
2. Child sexual abuse material, or a model built to make it.
3. A face or voice model of a real person without that person's documented consent.
4. A model marketed for fraud, malware or attacks.
5. Malware or secrets (keys, tokens, credentials) in any file or card.
6. Leaked weights, meaning weights the owner did not release.
7. Doxxing data, or datasets of private personal information.
8. Spam: listings made to sell, advertise or game search.

The standard. We judge a listing by how it is presented and what it is for, not only by what it can do. A general model that can be misused is allowed. A model that is named, tuned or marketed for a banned use is not.

Licenses. Only licenses on the allow-list, or a custom license that passed a person's audit, a click-through, and a check that third parties may redistribute. Otherwise we serve from the source only, or we do not list. Gated repos are skipped. We do not copy gated files and we do not bypass a gate. See Licenses in the docs.

How decisions are made#

Today Allternit's founder decides. There is no board and no vote. We say so because it is true.

• Listing and removal. Automatic quarantine happens in only two cases: a scanner hit, or a match to a hash on the blocklist. Nothing else is removed without a person looking at it.
• Unclear cases in the first 90 days. Draft default: Allternit rules, with counsel for anything that involves a real person. We confirm this before launch.
• Reports. We decide each report within 72 hours of receipt and tell the reporter. Malware and child sexual abuse material are handled at once.
• Appeals. The owner of a removed item may appeal in writing within 30 days. A person who did not make the first decision reviews it and answers in 14 days. Removals for child sexual abuse material are not appealed through this process.
• Changes to this Operating Statement. Changes go in the log below, with a date. A change that weakens a "We always" or "We never" line needs the nonprofit's board once one exists.

Several points still need counsel and a final decision: the wording of the real-person consent standard, the reporting steps for child sexual abuse material, the license list beyond v0, and whether this wording creates a promise we cannot keep at scale. They are marked as open until they are closed.

How money works#

Freeweights does not earn money. Public downloads are never sold. It is subsidized.

• Stage 0 costs nothing. It uses Cloudflare Pages, one Worker, a database and a small object store on free tiers, plus a public GitHub repository and free email routes. The ledger records these as zero-dollar rows.
• Support is first applied to running costs. Support goes to Allternit LLC, into a separate account used for Freeweights. It is not a charitable gift and is not tax-deductible.
• The support link is not open yet. It opens only after a separate bank account, the support terms page, the accountant's written view and a Minnesota charitable-solicitation check are done.
• Sponsors and mirror hosts give capacity. It is logged at the value they state, with their consent. It never changes catalog order.
• Allternit's share. A published share of Allternit revenue from running Freeweights models on Allternit's own cloud goes into the ledger. The draft is 5 percent of net revenue from those jobs. We set the final figure before launch.
• Stages start on prepaid money. A stage starts when three months are prepaid or pledged in writing. A step down is announced 30 days ahead.
• Everything is public. See the Ledger page.

The road to a nonprofit owner#

The aim is for a separate nonprofit to own the commons: the name, the repository organization, the ledger, the mirror data and the signing keys. Allternit would then be a vendor to the nonprofit at a fair price, under a conflict policy.

Until then Allternit LLC owns Freeweights. If a nonprofit takes over, we say how support money moves, and supporters may ask for a refund first.

Report a problem#

Send reports to freeweights@allternit.com for now. Role addresses (abuse, dmca and security at freeweights) are set up as routes before launch, and this page is updated when they exist.

• Banned content or a policy problem: abuse report.
• Copyright: a copyright notice, below.
• Malware, secrets or a security hole: security report.
• A wrong license, checksum or source: tell us the model id and what you found.

You get an acknowledgement and a ticket number. We decide within 72 hours.

Takedowns, counter-notices and appeals#

What counts as a takedown. Any removal or disabling of a listing or file after a report, a scan, a blocklist match, a court order or a legal notice. Every one is counted.

Copyright notice. A notice must name the work, the infringing item, the sender's contact details, a good-faith statement and a statement of authority, with a signature. We remove or disable the item and tell the uploader and the source author.

Counter-notice. The owner may send a counter-notice. If it is complete, we restore the item in 10 to 14 business days unless the sender files a court action. Repeat infringers are removed from any contributor program.

Appeal. Written, within 30 days. A different person reviews it. Answer in 14 days.

Blocklist. A list of hashes and identifiers of removed items. It holds no content. A hash stays until an appeal or a court order removes it.

Counter. The public takedown counter sits at the end of this page (the site build fills it) and shows per month: reports received, items removed, items restored and reason categories. At launch it reads zero.

We plan to file a designated agent with the US Copyright Office. This is not done yet. Counsel confirms the filing and the fee first.

Change log#

Takedown counter#

Every removal is counted here, read from policy/takedowns.json when this page was built.