apathetic-noai

Apathetic No-AI Use Rider (aNOAI)

The Apathetic No-AI Use Rider (aNOAI) is a short, versioned addendum to permissive licenses (e.g., MIT) that restricts use of a project for training, fine-tuning, or improving machine-learning or AI systems. It is designed to be portable and easy to adopt, and intended so that in the future, once a majority of adopters feel the Rider is no longer necessary, its restrictions can be removed.

[!NOTE] This Rider does not restrict the use of AI tools in a project (which is nearly unenforceable). It only restricts the project licensed with it from being used as training data for AI.

Usage

To apply the Rider to your project:

1. Include the text from RIDER_v1.md in your repository.
2. Include or reference it in your LICENSE (see our MIT-aNOAI license as an example) or documentation as needed.
3. Ensure you comply with the restrictions as described.

The Rider is Version 1 or later. Later versions may modify, replace, or remove these restrictions. Always refer to the canonical source for the latest version:

https://github.com/apathetic-license/apathetic-noai

[!WARNING] Adding this Rider changes the rights users have under your Base license, and the resulting modified license can no longer be considered official or OSI approved.

Future versions

By saying v1 or later, users of your project may adopt any future version published by the Apathetic License Collective.

The intent is that when members (see below) feel the legal and ethical framework around AI properly compensates and represents contributions, all projects using this Rider can remove their restrictions without relicensing, including projects that are not actively maintained.

See our hypothetical future version drafts/DRAFT_v99.md, which removes all restrictions. This draft is not intended for adoption and exists solely for reference.

Apathetic License Collective

The Rider is maintained by the Apathetic License Collective, a group of contributors and projects who support oversight of the AI-use restrictions.

Joining the Collective

To join the Collective:

• Your repository must be public.
• You must adopt a version of the Apathetic No-AI Use Rider.
• Your repository should have a minimal level of community visibility (e.g., ~5 GitHub stars or three contributors) to avoid spam entries.
• Organizations and individual accounts may register one vote each through a representative.
• Submit a PR updating members.jsonc with your membership details for approval.

Governance

• Members may propose changes to the Rider or future versions.
• Voting starts if 2 voting members support the change (or 1/3 of the membership, whichever is less) and lasts one month.
• Changes take effect if approved by a supermajority of members (80%) after the voting period ends. Only members who vote count toward the majority.
• The Collective may vote to modify, replace, or remove the restrictions in future versions, including a potential “null” version (v99) with no restrictions.

The Collective is intended to be lightweight, transparent, and apolitical, providing a community-backed mechanism for versioning the Rider without overcomplicating adoption.

Repository License

This repository is licensed under the MIT License with the Apathetic No-AI Use Rider v1.0 or later. See LICENSE for details.

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