GitHub has joined an open source coalition of Black Forest Labs, Hugging Face, and Mozilla Corporation calling for targeted amendments to California’s AI Transparency Act (SB 942, as proposed to be amended in SB 1000). Read the full letter here.
At issue is a narrow but important problem for developers: as currently drafted, the bill’s license revocation provisions conflict with how open source licenses work in practice. Open source licenses are designed to be perpetual and irrevocable, which is what allows developers to reliably build on, reuse, and share code across projects and organizations.
The proposed language would require developers to revoke licenses if downstream users fail to meet certain obligations. That approach is incompatible with widely used open source licenses, and it could introduce uncertainty across the software supply chain—particularly for collaborative and community-driven projects.
The coalition’s letter explains that this requirement is not necessary to achieve the bill’s goals. Developers who modify and deploy AI systems are already directly covered by the law, and enforcement mechanisms remain in place. At the same time, there is a workable alternative: aligning with the EU’s approach in the AI Act Transparency Code of Practice, which recognizes the distinct nature of the open source ecosystem and acknowledges that notifying downstream users of best practices in documentation is sufficient.
GitHub supports these amendments because they preserve the bill’s transparency objectives while maintaining compatibility with open source development. Getting this balance right is critical to ensuring that California continues to support both AI accountability and open, collaborative innovation.
Call to action
We encourage you to review the letter and share your perspective with policymakers. Clear, technically grounded feedback that includes open source developers and civil society can help ensure that AI transparency requirements work in practice without compromising the open source ecosystem that underpins AI innovation.
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