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

[Nik]

Hello Shuji-san,

Perhaps this is exactly what I'd like to achieve.
As a developer, I'm more interested in attribution and the technologies
used than in the legal aspect.
I simply assumed from the start that a license is officially part of any
repository and can provide this information.
And it would be interesting, perhaps even useful, to know how a particular
project was created -
whether by hand, with the help of AI, or whether it's entirely the product
of AI agents.

Nik

вс, 29 мар. 2026 г. в 16:52, Shuji Sado <shujisado at gmail.com>:

> Nik-san,
>
> Your three questions are not unreasonable, but I think there are more
> fundamental issues before reaching them.
>
> This revision does seem to reduce or soften some of the fatal concerns in
> the earlier version. However, I still find it very difficult to see this as
> a viable candidate for OSI approval. A number of definitions remain
> unclear, and the legal mechanism itself still appears unstable.
> More fundamentally, I am not yet convinced that this needs to be a new
> license at all.
>
> What you seem to be trying to achieve may be better implemented through an
> MIT or Apache-style permissive license, accompanied by a separate
> provenance convention and, where expressly chosen, a contributor-side
> no-claim or non-assertion statement.
>
> I do not deny that such a framework could still raise separate OSI
> questions. But at least as a matter of legal design, that approach seems
> materially safer and simpler than embedding these ideas into a new
> standalone license.
>
> So, to me, the more important question comes before how to structure the
> provenance syntax. It is whether this really needs to be a new license for
> OSI review in the first place.
>
> Shuji
>
> 2026/3/29 0:14 Nik <nik.sharky at gmail.com>:
>
>> 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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>
>
> --
> Shuji Sado
> Chairman, Open Source Group Japan
> https://opensource.jp/
> English blog: https://shujisado.org/
> Japanese blog: https://shujisado.com/
>
> _______________________________________________
> The opinions expressed in this email are those of the sender and not
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