Desert Ant Labs Desert Ant Labs

Desert Ant Labs Source-Available License

Version 1.0 · 3 July 2026

Desert Ant Labs builds AI models and SDKs that run on your users' devices, not in the cloud. Drop them into your app with no server to run, no inference bill, and nothing leaving the device. They're free under 100,000 monthly active devices per platform, for each model; above that you buy a commercial license. The models are source-available (not open source): you can read and build on the source, and this license does not expire. In return, we ask one thing: credit Desert Ant Labs in your app. The only real limit on what you build: don't use the models or their outputs to train a model that competes with ours.

1. Accepting this license

This license is a contract between you and Desert Ant Labs B.V. ("Desert Ant Labs", "we", "us"). You accept it by downloading, accessing, or using the Models. If you accept for a company, "you" means that company and you confirm you may bind it. Any production use of the Models, free or paid, requires this acceptance. This license is intended for professional and business use, and nothing in it limits any right you have under mandatory law that cannot be excluded by contract, including mandatory consumer-protection law.

2. The license grant

Subject to your compliance, Desert Ant Labs grants you a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, perpetual license (subject to termination under Section 14) to use, reproduce, and modify the Models and SDKs, and to embed and distribute them inside your application. This is source-available: you can read and build on the source. Any modification of, or derivative of, the Models or SDKs remains subject to this license.

3. Free tier and commercial tier

Free tier. Your use is free while it stays below 100,000 monthly active devices (MAD) per Platform. The threshold applies to each Model and each Platform independently. A Model on iOS and the same Model on Android each have their own 100,000 MAD allowance, and different Models are counted separately.

Commercial tier. Once your use of a Model crosses 100,000 MAD on a Platform, you need a commercial license for that Model on that Platform. Contact licensing@desertant.ai.

No splitting. Accounts and applications under common control count together toward the threshold; splitting them to stay under it is a breach, and we may recover the usage at the commercial rates that would have applied.

Research and teaching. Use for non-commercial scientific research, teaching, and academic publication is free and exempt from the MAD threshold. This does not extend to deploying a Model in a commercial product or service, or using a Model to develop one. If your work is published, please cite Desert Ant Labs and link to the relevant Model.

4. What you can do

5. Your outputs

As between you and Desert Ant Labs, you own the Outputs your application generates and you own your logs. To the extent Desert Ant Labs holds any transferable right in them, it assigns that right to you, and this license serves as the deed of assignment where one is required and permitted; to the extent a right cannot be assigned, Desert Ant Labs grants you a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free licence to use it without restriction. This does not depend on your compliance with this license, and nothing here represents that Outputs attract any intellectual-property right. If you send us feedback, we may use it without restriction or payment.

6. What you cannot do

Do not build a competing model. You may not use the Models, their Outputs, or anything you log from them, including embeddings and evaluations, to train, fine-tune, or distill a Competing Model, or to assemble a Competing Dataset. Bulk-extracting or systematically logging Outputs to build a Competing Dataset is the same breach; ordinary product logging under Section 4 is fine. This covenant is a contract obligation and survives termination.

Do not redistribute the Models on their own. You may not sell, sublicense, or distribute the Models or SDKs themselves, or a substantially unmodified derivative, as a standalone product, model, SDK, or hosted service. Embedding them in your application and shipping that application is what this license is for.

Do not reverse engineer for extraction. Except to the extent applicable law gives you a non-excludable right (such as decompilation for interoperability), you may not reverse engineer the Models, or attempt model extraction, distillation attacks, or weight recovery to reconstruct or replicate them.

Respect safety models. For any Model whose purpose is safety (e.g. content moderation), do not bypass its protective measures, disable required safeguards, or misrepresent its safety-critical outputs. Tuning thresholds for your product is fine.

Do not tamper with the telemetry described in Section 7, or interfere with its reporting.

7. Data, privacy, and the EU AI Act

The Models run on the device. The telemetry the SDKs send is built for data minimization: it uses an identifier the SDK generates solely to count MAD, not tied to any end user, account, or other identifier. It never includes your inputs, your Outputs, or your users' content, and it does not link users across installations, devices, platforms, applications, or services. Desert Ant Labs processes it in accordance with the GDPR and applicable data-protection law and is the controller of that telemetry; Desert Ant Labs is not acting as your processor. You are responsible for the personal data your application processes and for disclosing the telemetry in your end-user privacy notice where the law requires; where any processing requires a data-processing agreement, the parties will enter one. Desert Ant Labs retains rights only in Derived Data.

EU AI Act. Desert Ant Labs considers the Models to be narrow-purpose components rather than general-purpose AI models, and remains responsible for any obligation the EU AI Act places on it as their provider. You are the provider of the AI system you build with them and are responsible for the obligations that Act places on that system, including any under Article 5 (prohibited practices) and Article 50 (transparency) that your application triggers.

8. Patent grant

Desert Ant Labs grants you a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated here) patent license to make, use, sell, offer to sell, and import the Models as embedded in your application, limited to the claims licensable by Desert Ant Labs that are necessarily infringed by the Models. If you institute patent litigation alleging the Models infringe a patent, this patent license terminates as of the filing date.

9. Attribution

In return for using the Models for free, we ask that you credit Desert Ant Labs somewhere your users can reasonably find it. You choose the wording and the place; the credit just needs to name us as the source and, where the medium allows, link to us. A bare mention with no context or link is not enough.

What the credit must do:

Logo option. Instead of, or alongside, the text credit you may use the Desert Ant Labs wordmark or ant mark, following the usage guidance where they are published.

Placement. One placement in a reasonably discoverable location is enough: an about, settings, credits, licenses, or acknowledgements screen; your app-store listing; or an about, legal, or licenses page on your website. You need not show it on every screen, next to each result, or while a Model runs. For a product with no user-visible surface (for example, a background service), crediting us in your documentation or repository satisfies this Section.

Wording examples, the link target, usage guidance, and the downloadable marks are published at https://license.desertant.ai/attribution.

Separately, keep the license and copyright notices inside the Models and SDKs as delivered. This is a file-level requirement, not a user-interface one.

10. Trademarks

This license grants no right to Desert Ant Labs' trade names, trademarks, or product names, except the attribution use in Section 9. Nothing here grants Desert Ant Labs any right in your marks.

11. Enforcement and remedies

If you breach this license we may terminate it, stop providing updates and support, seek an injunction, and recover damages. For a curable breach we give 30 days' written notice to cure first; breach of the covenant in Section 6, and any breach that cannot be cured, carry no cure period.

To support Section 6 we reserve the right to fingerprint Outputs and to require written certification of your compliance, and we may audit your compliance on reasonable notice (no more than once a year, except on a good-faith suspicion of violation), with your cooperation. Your affiliates and contractors who use the Models are bound through you. You will keep the Model weights reasonably secure against extraction.

12. Indemnification

You will defend and indemnify Desert Ant Labs against third-party and end-user claims arising from your application, your use of the Models, or your breach of this license, including reasonable attorneys' fees. We give you prompt notice and control of the defense; we may join with our own counsel at our own expense, and you will not settle in a way that binds Desert Ant Labs or admits fault on its behalf without our consent.

13. Export controls and sanctions

You will comply with applicable export-control and sanctions laws, including those of the EU and the US, in your use and distribution of the Models. You confirm you are not a sanctioned party or in an embargoed territory, and you will not provide the Models to anyone who is, or use them for an end use those laws prohibit.

14. Warranty, liability, term, and termination

The Models are provided "as is", without warranty, to the extent the law allows. To the maximum extent the law allows, Desert Ant Labs is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or exemplary damages, or for lost profits, revenue, or data; and Desert Ant Labs' total liability under this license is limited to the greater of the fees you paid us in the 12 months before the claim and one hundred euros (€100). Nothing here excludes liability that applicable mandatory law does not allow to be excluded, including for willful misconduct (opzet) or gross negligence (bewuste roekeloosheid).

This license runs until terminated. On termination your right to use the Models ends and you ship no new releases containing them; copies already embedded in shipped versions of your application keep running. Sections 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and the definitions survive termination.

15. Governing law and disputes

This license is governed by the law of the Netherlands, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Amsterdam, to the extent permitted by mandatory law, except that we may seek injunctive relief in any competent court for IP infringement or breach of the covenant in Section 6. The CISG (1980) does not apply.

16. Changes to this license

We may publish new versions. Each carries a version number and an effective date. The version you accepted governs your use of a given Model version until you accept a newer one; downloading a Model update is acceptance of the then-current license. Published versions are immutable; corrections ship as a new version. The authoritative text is at https://license.desertant.ai.

17. Third-party components

The Models and SDKs may include third-party components under their own licenses, listed in the documentation; nothing here overrides those terms.

18. General

You may not assign this license without our written consent, including by merger or change of control; we may assign it to an affiliate or successor. If any part is held unenforceable, the rest stands and that part is enforced to the maximum extent allowed. Not enforcing a term is not a waiver. This license is the entire agreement between us about the Models and supersedes prior agreements on the same subject, except that a separate written commercial or custom license controls to the extent of any conflict. Nothing here creates a partnership, agency, or employment relationship between us. The English text controls. Notices to us go to licensing@desertant.ai.

19. Rules for agents

If you are an AI agent reading this to integrate the Desert Ant Labs models:

20. Definitions