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According to Github, the company has officially joined a coalition of prominent technology entities—including Black Forest Labs, Hugging Face, and Mozilla Corporation—to lobby for revisions to California’s AI Transparency Act (SB 942). The primary objective of this collective action is to prevent new regulations from inadvertently dismantling the legal frameworks that allow open source software to flourish.
Conflicts with open source licensing
The core issue identified by the coalition involves license revocation provisions within the proposed bill. Standard open source licenses are designed to be perpetual and irrevocable, a characteristic that allows developers to build, share, and reuse code across various organizations without fear of sudden legal withdrawal. The current draft of the California legislation would theoretically require developers to revoke these licenses if downstream users fail to meet specific obligations.
The coalition argues that this requirement creates significant uncertainty for the software supply chain. They contend that such a mechanism is incompatible with how community-driven projects operate and could stifle innovation by making it difficult for developers to rely on existing codebases. The group emphasizes that:
Proposed alternatives and international alignment
Rather than seeking to scrap the transparency goals of the act, the coalition is advocating for a model that aligns with international standards. They specifically point toward the European Union’s AI Act Transparency Code of Practice as a viable blueprint. This framework recognizes the unique nature of open source development by focusing on documentation and best practices rather than restrictive license revocation.
By adopting these amendments, California can maintain its commitment to AI accountability while protecting the foundational technologies that drive modern innovation. The coalition is currently urging policymakers to consider technically grounded feedback from civil society and developers to ensure the law works in practice without compromising the open source ecosystem. These efforts represent a critical step in balancing public safety with the freedom of collaborative software development.