License change

We are releasing TGI v1.0 under a new license: HFOIL 1.0. All prior versions of TGI remain licensed under Apache 2.0, the last Apache 2.0 version being version 0.9.4.

HFOIL stands for Hugging Face Optimized Inference License, and it has been specifically designed for our optimized inference solutions. While the source code remains accessible, HFOIL is not a true open source license because we added a restriction: to sell a hosted or managed service built on top of TGI, we now require a separate agreement. You can consult the new license here.

What does this mean for you?

This change in source code licensing has no impact on the overwhelming majority of our user community who use TGI for free. Additionally, both our Inference Endpoint customers and those of our commercial partners will also remain unaffected.

However, it will restrict non-partnered cloud service providers from offering TGI v1.0+ as a service without requesting a license.

To elaborate further:

• If you are an existing user of TGI prior to v1.0, your current version is still Apache 2.0 and you can use it commercially without restrictions.

• If you are using TGI for personal use or research purposes, the HFOIL 1.0 restrictions do not apply to you.

• If you are using TGI for commercial purposes as part of an internal company project (that will not be sold to third parties as a hosted or managed service), the HFOIL 1.0 restrictions do not apply to you.

• If you integrate TGI into a hosted or managed service that you sell to customers, then consider requesting a license to upgrade to v1.0 and later versions - you can email us at api-enterprise@huggingface.co with information about your service.

For more information, see: #726.

Full Changelog: https://github.com/huggingface/text-generation-inference/compare/v0.9.4...v1.0.0