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

Sun Mar 15 22:57:08 UTC 2026

Hi Nik,

You can't change a license while it's being considered, it makes it a 
nightmare for the license committee and its recordkeeping. The proper 
approach is to withdraw the previous version and resubmit a newer 
version. But before you do that I would suggest waiting some more for 
more comments, because there may be other ways in which you want to 
change it, so you can do it cumulatively. I've also seen a suggestion 
that it should be discussed on the license-discuss list, instead of the 
license-review list, given the novelty of the concept, so you might want 
to see where that goes. The license review process is by consensus and 
people contributing on their spare time, so you need to give adequate 
time for feedback.

Pam

Pamela S. Chestek
Chestek Legal
4641 Post St.
Unit 4316
El Dorado Hills, CA 95762
+1 919-800-8033
pamela at chesteklegal.com
www.chesteklegal.com

On 3/13/2026 11:54 AM, Nik wrote:
> Thank you for the substantive feedback. Both points are well taken and 
> I want to
> address them directly. I attach new license text according to raised 
> questions and propositions.
>
> ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
>
> POINT 1 — THE NAME
>
> You are correct that "MIT" is a registered trademark of the 
> Massachusetts Institute
> of Technology, and using it in a new license name creates ambiguity at 
> best and
> trademark risk at worst.
>
> It is good idea to rename it to:
>
>   AI-Attribution License (AIAL)
>
> The new name reflects what the license actually does — extends attribution
> requirements to cover AI authorship — without borrowing the MIT name.
> It is also more descriptive for developers choosing a license.
>
> The SPDX identifier would become: AIAL-1.0
>
> I welcome any alternative name suggestions from the community if there are
> objections to "AI-Attribution License" as well.
>
> ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
>
> POINT 2 — PER-FILE ATTRIBUTION
>
> This is the more substantive point and I agree with it completely.
>
> You correctly identified that a single project-level Authorship 
> Declaration is
> insufficient for any real-world project with a development history.
> Real projects can contain:
>   - files written entirely by humans (pre-AI era)
>   - files generated by AI, never touched by humans
>   - files where a human wrote 80% and AI generated 20%
>   - files inherited from third-party OSS projects
>   - files modified by multiple AI tools across multiple years
>
> A single checkbox in a root LICENSE file cannot honestly describe this 
> mix.
>
> The solution, as you suggested (referencing APL2.0), is per-file 
> attribution.
> The good news is that the ecosystem for this already exists and is widely
> adopted: the REUSE Specification (reuse.software, FSFE) combined with SPDX
> per-file headers.
>
> REUSE already defines two standard tags per file:
>
>   # SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2026 Jane Doe
>   # SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-3.0-or-later
>
> The revised license extends this with
> two new optional-but-recommended AI-specific SPDX tags:
>
>   SPDX-AI-Authorship: [fully-generated | ai-assisted | human-authored]
>   SPDX-AI-Tool:       [tool name and version]
>
> These tags are:
>   - Consistent with existing SPDX tag-value syntax
>   - Backward-compatible (they are optional for human-authored files where
>     no AI was involved at all)
>   - Machine-readable and scannable with standard grep/REUSE tooling
>   - Compatible with the REUSE specification — they sit alongside existing
>     SPDX-FileCopyrightText and SPDX-License-Identifier tags
>
> The project-level LICENSE file retains a simplified Authorship
> Declaration as a default/fallback for projects that have not yet adopted
> per-file headers, but per-file headers take precedence where present.
>
> ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
>
> REVISED LICENSE — AI-Attribution License (AIAL) v1.0
>
> The revised license text is attached as AIAL-1.0.txt. Key changes:
>   1. Name changed from "AI-MIT License" to "AI-Attribution License (AIAL)"
>   2. SPDX identifier changed from AI-MIT-1.0 to AIAL-1.0
>   3. Project-level Authorship Declaration retained as fallback default
>   4. Per-file attribution via new SPDX tags defined and required for
>      files where the project-level declaration does not apply uniformly
>   5. Precedence rule: per-file tags override project-level declaration
>   6. Inherited OSS files: explicit provision for files where AI authorship
>      status is unknown (SPDX-AI-Authorship: unknown)
>
> ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
>
> Thank you again for the careful reading. This kind of feedback is exactly
> what makes the process valuable.
>
> Nik
> nik.sharky at gmail.com
>
> пт, 13 мар. 2026 г. в 18:35, Josh Berkus <josh.berkus at opensource.org>:
>
>     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
>
>
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