Floor-weighted, not averaged. The weakest factor caps the level, because ownership is a conjunction. Transparency is weak, which holds the whole verdict down regardless of the rest.

You partly own Qwen: the Apache-licensed mainstream Qwen3 sizes are yours to run, modify and self-host, they perform strongly (especially coding), and self-hosted your data stays on your infrastructure. Two things cap it at partial. First the licence is per-checkpoint - Apache-2.0 on mainstream Qwen3, but the legacy/large Tongyi Qianwen checkpoints (Qwen-72B, Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct) carry a >100M-MAU trigger and 'Built with Qwen' attribution - so verify the LICENSE on the exact checkpoint. Second, transparency: China-aligned censorship is baked in and training is closed; the hosted path now carries a grounded no-training commitment (Model Studio FAQ) alongside the Singapore-storage/SCC-DPF/retention privacy policy, with only the formal Model Studio Service Agreement specifics (exact retention, region, opt-out) still unread. Adopt with hard limits: keep politically sensitive and regulated workloads off it, confirm the per-checkpoint licence, and if you place a systemic-risk-scale variant on the EU market, close the Article 55 gap yourself.

Use and modify freelyCan you run, modify and adapt it with no gate and no field-of-use trap?

Strong

The licence is per-checkpoint, not one grant across the family: mainstream Qwen3 (0.6B, 32B, 235B-A22B, Coder-480B-A35B-Instruct) is Apache-2.0 with unconditional commercial use and no MAU clause, but the legacy/large Tongyi Qianwen checkpoints (Qwen-72B, Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct) carry a >100M-monthly-active-user licence trigger, a 'Built with Qwen' attribution requirement and export controls - check the LICENSE file on the exact checkpoint before you rely on Apache terms.

How this scores (AOI sub-dimensions)

Openness3/5how much is released - weights, data, code, licence - and how freelyOpen-weights tier: weights are downloadable under Apache-2.0 with a good model card, but training data and training code are undisclosed and evaluation is only partially reproducible.

Legal3/5how permissive and clean the licence is for real commercial useThe permissive Apache-2.0 license on the mainstream sizes is a real plus and better than a restricted community license.

TransparencyDo you know what it is: weights, training, behaviour, and legible terms?

Weak

You hold the weights but cannot inspect what is in them - training data and code are closed and China-aligned topic censorship is baked into behaviour, so sensitive-topic coverage is distorted in ways you cannot audit. On the hosted path, Alibaba's Model Studio FAQ now grounds a no-training commitment ('never uses your data for model training'), though the formal Model Studio Service Agreement - exact retention, region and opt-out - is still unread.

How this scores (AOI sub-dimensions)

Provenance3/5how well we can trace and verify what went into the modelVerified Qwen org on Hugging Face plus official ModelScope publication, safetensors with checksums, and no canonical-org malicious incident (checklist 5/8).

Governance3/5how accountable and well-documented the publisher isActive, accountable publisher (Alibaba Qwen team) with a rapid release cadence and a verified presence on two hubs, but no documented vulnerability-disclosure or deprecation policy and no Code of Practice signature.

Doesn't fail youIs it reliable and good enough for the job?

Strong

Strong across the ladder including a top open coder, with long context up to 128K and documented thinking/non-thinking modes - a capable, broadly useful backbone for coding and knowledge workflows.

How this scores (AOI sub-dimensions)

Performance4/5how capable it is relative to its classStrong general capability and especially strong coding: Qwen3-Coder is among the best open coding models on independent evaluation.

Operational5/5how practical it is to run, serve and maintain in productionFirst-class ecosystem support: dual distribution on Hugging Face and ModelScope, broad serving support (vLLM, llama.cpp, Ollama, TGI, MLX), a very wide size range from laptop to datacentre, and abundant community quantizations.

Safety3/5whether misuse risks are evaluated and guardrails are providedInstruct variants are safety-tuned and withstand casual jailbreaks, but tuning is lighter than Western frontier labs, there is no companion guard model, and the models exhibit China-aligned topic censorship - a behavioural quirk to account for.

Doesn't extract your dataDoes running it keep your knowledge and data yours?

Strong

Self-hosted, the Apache-licensed weights run on your own infrastructure with no clawback or telemetry, so your data stays yours. On Alibaba's hosted Qwen, the Model Studio FAQ grounds a no-training commitment ('never uses your data for model training'; call data stored, encrypted with AES-256 in transit), and the general privacy policy documents Singapore storage, SCC/DPF cross-border transfers and 'ongoing legitimate business need' retention - solid, though the formal Model Studio Service Agreement (exact retention, region, opt-out) is still unread.

How this scores

Not a scored AOI dimension. For a self-hosted model, data-control is a structural property of running the weights yourself, strong by default unless the model phones home or the licence claws back rights. For a hosted API this factor is the retention + train-on-inputs + residency read, scored from the binding terms.

How the AOI score is computed

The seven dimensions above, each scored 0 to 5, weighted and summed to the 0 to 100 headline. The score is the analytical input behind the ownership verdict, not the verdict itself.

DimensionScoreWeightPoints

Openness3/50.1810.8

Provenance3/50.169.6

Legal3/50.169.6

Safety3/50.169.6

Performance4/50.1411.2

Operational5/50.1212.0

Governance3/50.084.8

HeadlineC · 67.6/100

Grade ceiling: a hard flag (🚩 EU AI Act systemic-risk variants (Qwen3-235B, Qwen3-Coder-480B) likely exceed 1e25 FLOPs with no Article 55 documentation) caps the grade below the raw band. See the classification matrices.

Dossier coverageAssess 87%Implement 91%Use 67%Support 50%How complete our four-domain documentation is, a measure of our coverage, not of the model. Each domain links to its page.

Sources

Every rating traces to a primary document. Read means the text was verified; unverified means it is known to exist but has not yet been read.

DocumentWhat it grounds

Model cardread2026-07-25

Qwen3 checkpoints are hosted on the verified Qwen org on Hugging Face in safetensors with checksums.

Licenceread2026-07-25

Mainstream Qwen3 checkpoints are released under Apache-2.0 with unconditional commercial use and NO monthly-active-user clause - metadata verified across four checkpoints (Qwen3-0.6B, Qwen3-32B, Qwen3-235B-A22B, Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35B-Instruct), each displaying "License: apache-2.0".

Licenceread2026-07-25

Legacy/large Tongyi Qianwen checkpoints (Qwen-72B, Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct) are NOT Apache-2.0 - the Tongyi Qianwen community licence, read verbatim: Sec 4 "If you are commercially using the Materials, and your product or service has more than 100 million monthly active users, you shall request a license from us"; Sec 5.b "Built with Qwen"/"Improved using Qwen" attribution; Sec 5.a export controls (China/US/other).

Technical_reportread2026-07-25

Qwen3 Technical Report (arXiv 2505.09388): documents the Qwen3 family, thinking/non-thinking modes, thinking budget, and multilingual coverage (~119 languages).

Privacy Policyread2026-07-25

General Alibaba Cloud International Website Privacy Policy, read: retention tied to "ongoing legitimate business need" (Sec F); cross-border transfers under SCCs (GDPR Art.

Documentationread2026-07-25

Alibaba Cloud Model Studio FAQ, read verbatim: "Alibaba Cloud strictly protects data privacy and never uses your data for model training." Model Studio "will store data generated from model and application calls"; data is "encrypted with AES-256" in transit.

Terms of serviceunverified2026-07-25

The formal Model Studio / DashScope Service Agreement - its exact retention period, storage region and training opt-out mechanics - was not directly reachable and remains unread.

Model cardunverified2026-07-25

Qwen is also officially published on Alibaba's ModelScope hub (dual distribution).