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

[Nik]

Dear OSI License Review Committee,

I am submitting the **AI-MIT License, Version 1.0** for consideration by
the Open Source Initiative.

## Summary

The AI-MIT License is a permissive open-source license designed to address
a genuine gap: existing licenses were written for human authors and handle
AI-generated code poorly, creating false implications about authorship and
copyright status.

The license is deliberately minimal — it preserves the structure and
permissiveness of the MIT License while adding three targeted changes for
the AI context.

## The problem it solves

1. **False authorship implication.** When `Copyright (c) [year] [author]`
is applied to fully AI-generated code, it implies human authorship and
copyright that may not legally exist in most jurisdictions.

2. **No standard for disclosure.** There is no widely adopted mechanism for
disclosing whether code is AI-generated, AI-assisted, or human-authored.
This matters for supply-chain security, regulatory compliance (EU AI Act),
and intellectual honesty in open source.

3. **Undefined copyright status.** Fully autonomous AI-generated code (no
human creative input) is in a legal grey zone in most jurisdictions. A
license that claims copyright over it is at best misleading, at worst
invalid.

## What the license does differently from MIT

The license adds one structural element (the Authorship Declaration) and
three conditions/clauses:

**Authorship Declaration** — a required checkbox at the top of the LICENSE
file with three modes:
- *Fully AI-generated*: no copyright claimed; code dedicated to public
domain
- *AI-assisted*: human-directed, AI-generated; standard copyright applies
- *Human-authored*: AI used as a tool only; identical to MIT posture

**Condition 2 — Transparency**: redistribution or use as AI training data
must not misrepresent AI origin as human authorship.

**Condition 3 — No Copyright Claim**: for fully autonomous code, explicit
public domain dedication (with a perpetual irrevocable fallback for
jurisdictions where public domain dedication is impossible).

**Extended disclaimer**: adds three AI-specific disclaimers about training
data provenance, regulatory compliance, and jurisdictional limitations of
the authorship declaration.

## OSD compliance analysis

1. **Free Redistribution** ✓ — no restriction on sale or distribution
2. **Source Code** ✓ — no source restriction
3. **Derived Works** ✓ — modification and redistribution permitted
4. **Integrity of the Author's Source Code** ✓ — no patch-file requirement;
attribution preserved
5. **No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups** ✓
6. **No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor** ✓
7. **Distribution of License** ✓ — same rights apply to all recipients
8. **License Must Not Be Specific to a Product** ✓
9. **License Must Not Restrict Other Software** ✓
10. **License Must Be Technology-Neutral** ✓

The Transparency condition (Condition 2) requires disclosure of AI origin
but does not restrict use in any field — it is an attribution/honesty
requirement, not a field-of-endeavor restriction.

## SPDX identifier

We are concurrently requesting the SPDX identifier `AI-MIT-1.0` through the
SPDX GitHub repository.

## Repository

The full license text, README, translations, and supporting materials are
available at:
https://github.com/ai-mit-license/ai-mit-license

## A note on meta-context

This license was initially drafted with AI assistance (Claude, Anthropic)
at the direction of a human. We believe this is appropriate and have
disclosed it in the repository. The license is itself an example of the
category of work it governs.

We welcome feedback from the committee and the community at large.

Respectfully,
Nik
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