[License-review] [SUBMISSION] AI-MIT License 1.0 — permissive license for AI-generated code

[Josh Berkus]

On 3/12/26 5:30 PM, Nik wrote:
> I am submitting the AI-MIT License, Version 1.0 for OSI approval. The 
> full license text is attached to this email as a plain text file (AI- 
> MIT-License-1.0.txt).

So this is interesting, but will need some iterations I think 
(completely aside from any requirements the attorneys have).

The first part is the name; we may not be able to call it MIT, which is 
after all a trademark of the folks in Cambridge and this is not their 
license.  So we might need to call it AI-Attribution or something (which 
would be a good name considering the purpose of the license).

The second, larger problem occurs in the actual construction of software 
with AI assistance.  As written, this license targets only brand-new 
projects which are created "from scratch" and never modified again. 
This is fine for those, but I think project creators want to plan for 
success.

For any substantial project which has a history of development, there is 
going to be a mix, including: files that are wholly AI-generated, files 
which are AI-assisted, files which were written by humans, and files 
which were inherited from other OSS projects whose licenses do not 
require AI attribution so we don't know. Further, files which have been 
modified several times are going to have been modified by several AI tools.

If you want to follow this concept, I really think that some kind of 
per-file attribution (ala APL2.0) is going to be necessary, rather than 
a single statement of authorship over the whole project.

-- 
-- Josh Berkus
OSI Board Member