[License-discuss] [DISCUSSION] AIAL v2 (was AI-MIT) discussion — permissive license + provenance declarations + limited no-claim framework

Nik nik.sharky at gmail.com
Sat Mar 28 12:28:46 UTC 2026


Hello all,

Thank you to everyone who commented on the earlier AI-MIT / AIAL submission
and the subsequent discussion.

I decided to start from scratch in a new thread to make it clear.
Updated repo with current docs:
https://github.com/aicrafted/AI-Attribution-License
New edition of license text, provenance and faq also attached to letter.

IMO the most important points from the previous thread were:
1. The original AI-MIT name was not appropriate and created avoidable
confusion.
2. A single project-level authorship declaration is not sufficient for real
repositories.
3. Per-file or per-artifact provenance may be useful as documentation, but
it should not be treated as a conclusive legal determination.
4. The earlier draft also relied too heavily on hypothetical SPDX evolution.
5. The concept needs a cleaner separation between provenance disclosure and
legal effect.

Based on that feedback, considering a narrower v2 direction:

- A conservative permissive license core, intentionally close in spirit to
MIT/ISC
- An optional provenance declaration layer, used as documentation and
contributor representation
- An optional contributor-limited no-claim / covenant layer for
specifically declared generated-origin contributions
- An explicit rule that provenance declarations:
  - do not determine legal status by themselves
  - do not negate third-party or unknown rights
  - do not expand permissions beyond the declaring contributor’s own rights

In other words, the revised direction is not a license that decides whether
AI-generated code is public domain but rather: a permissive license
framework that allows provenance-aware disclosure and, where expressly
chosen, a contributor-limited no-claim posture, without pretending to
conclusively resolve unsettled authorship law.

At this point, I would like to focus on questions:
1. Is it preferable to keep provenance syntax entirely in a separate
specification, rather than trying to embed those semantics directly in the
license text
2. Does the "contributor-limited no-claim / covenant" model seem materially
safer than the earlier "fully AI-generated => public domain" framing
3. Are there obvious pitfalls in treating `mixed`, `unknown`, and
`inherited` as explicit conservative states that do not imply any special
legal effect

Thank you again for the comments — they were useful, and the goal here is
to narrow the scope and address the real concerns.

Best regards,
Nik Babichev (Nik the human)
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