That’s incorrect. GPL licenses are open source.

The GPL does not restrict anyone from selling or distributing GPL-licensed software as a component of an aggregate software distribution. For example, all Linux distributions contain GPL-licensed software, as the Linux kernel is GPLv2.

Software licenses that “discriminate against any person or group of persons” or “restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor” are not open source. Llama’s license doesn’t just restrict Llama from being used by companies with “700 million monthly active users”, it also restricts Llama from being used to “create, train, fine tune, or otherwise improve an AI model” or being used for military purposes (although Meta made an exception for the US military). Therefore, Llama is not open source.

Exactly!

If you are referring to licenses that prohibit commercial use or prevent certain types of users from using the software, those licenses are not open source because they “discriminate against any person or group of persons” or “restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor”.

For example, if a developer offers their software in a source-available “community” version that is restricted to non-commercial use and a proprietary “enterprise” version, neither the community version nor the enterprise version is open source. On the other hand, if a developer uses an open core licensing model by offering an open source “community” version and a proprietary “enterprise” version, the community version is open source while the enterprise version is not.

Open source software can be sold at different prices to different customers, and still remain open source. Open source software can also be sold only to certain types of customers, and still remain open source. Who the developer decides to sell or distribute the software to, and at what price, is unrelated to how the software is licensed.

However, because the Open Source Definition prohibits open source software licenses from discriminating against “any person or group of persons”, the customers who buy open source software cannot be restricted from reselling or redistributing the software to any other individual or organization.