This post did cover many of the same ideas I have been ruminating on concerning model weights and the nomenclature of current efforts. That's also why I generally tend to stick with calling these[0] "local/self hosted models" for the time being. A major reason for my reluctance is that I see weights far closer to binary than code, making a distinction important and current FOSS concepts not really applicable.
Of course, this all hinges on the idea that weights by themselves are inherently protected by current copyright, which still seems to be an unsettled topic, hotly debated by both laypeople and legal professionals. Authors generally are afforded copyright on their work by default, and weights raises so many questions concerning authorship that have never been considered.
This being such a contested issue, which will require new laws and/or precedent (depending on the legal system), is very problematic. Regardless of where you live, generally courts and government entities are not famous for their speedy reaction to new things, so clarity may take a while, at which point the industry might have already settled on some agreement that then may be adopted as a basis for actual legislation, which would likely favor financially well baked entities already actively lobbying for their interests, such as OpenAI.
Some have also pointed out that this is arguing semantics, and I am
tempted to agree in principle, but also want to emphasize that I feel
this is a situation where that can be valuable. Should weights in some way be afforded copyright protection, clear nomenclature will be needed. Putting some thought into this now is definitely not the worst idea.
I very strongly feel that the specific word "ethical" as part of defining licenses is not the best idea, though. "Ethical" can carry vastly different connotations, depending on a myriad of factors, many of which would go beyond the use-focused definition laid out in the post. Due to this, I'd argue for "behavioral" or "restricted use" over "ethical", as both more clearly state what the intended effect is in cases such as Open RAIL-M[1].
Part of my strong feelings on the use of the word "ethical" come from the fact that with weights and training data, there has been a lot of discussion concerning both rights of and considerations for creators whose published works have been used to create those weights. Due to this, the use of "ethical" referring to a group of licenses could give some the impression that this may indicate that the training data used was "ethically sourced", i.e. in agreement with the original creator. This is something that in my eyes should also have clear labeling, though with weights being very hard to reliably trace back to source data, it currently seems impossible to verify, making this essentially just a good faith effort.
[0] https://huggingface.co/tiiuae/falcon-40b-instruct
[1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/16NqKiAkzyZ55NClubCIFup8pT2j...