AI Native Application License (AINAL)

A modern, permissive software license designed for the realities of AI-assisted development.

This project was created while using claudit. To see the Claude Code conversations that led to each commit, clone this repo, install claudit and run claudit sync pull followed by claudit list and claudit show.

Overview

Traditional software licenses were drafted in an era where source code was written exclusively by humans, with clear lines of authorship and intellectual property ownership. The AI Native Application License acknowledges that these assumptions no longer hold, and offers a licensing framework built for how software is actually produced today.

AINAL is based on the MIT License, with modifications that reflect the changed nature of code authorship, originality, and liability in an age of AI code generation.

Why AINAL?

As AI coding agents become the primary authors of an increasing share of production software, existing licenses leave critical questions unanswered:

• Who is the copyright holder when code is generated by a model trained on millions of existing works?
• What does "original work" mean when any sufficiently specific prompt can reproduce functionally equivalent output?
• Where does liability rest when the code was written by an agent, built by a company, trained on data contributed by others?

AINAL provides clear, practical answers to these questions.

Usage

Copy the LICENSE file into your project root, or reference it in your package.json:

{
  "license": "AINAL-2.0"
}

Full Text

The full license text is available in LICENSE.

FAQ

Is AINAL OSI-approved?

No. AINAL is a new license and has not been submitted to the Open Source Initiative for review.

Is AINAL compatible with MIT/Apache 2.0/GPL?

AINAL is broadly permissive and should be compatible with most permissive licenses. Compatibility with copyleft licenses such as the GPL has not been formally evaluated, in part because nobody is entirely sure who would have standing to enforce it.

Can I use AINAL for commercial projects?

Yes. AINAL is fully compatible with commercial use and places no restrictions on it.

Who should I contact with legal questions?

Please see the LICENSE file.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please note that any contributions may be indistinguishable from what a coding agent would have produced independently, and will be licensed accordingly.

License

This project is licensed under the AI Native Application License v2.0 — see the LICENSE file for details.