# CatQualia Open-Or-Pay License (COPL) v1.0
**Copyright © 2026 CatQualia LLC. All rights reserved.** Effective Q1 2026.

> Plain-language summary (the binding terms are below; an IP attorney finalizes enforceability):
> **Free forever for research, individuals, academia, and non-commercial use — WITH attribution.**
> **Commercial use forces a choice: either (A) open-source your ENTIRE derivative stack under this same
> license, or (B) buy a commercial waiver (the tax).** There is no third, covert path: unlicensed
> commercial use is detectable (watermark lattice) and accrues back-liability from first use.

This License covers: (a) the CatQualia research corpus and the priority-of-thought records
(`catqualia_thoughts.jsonl`), (b) the CatQualia recursion/falsification **engine, method, and any code
herein** (`falsify.py`, `THE_RECURSION_GENERALIZED.md`, and derivatives), collectively the "Work."

---

## 1. FIELD GRANT — free, forever, for the commons
Permission is granted at no cost to any individual, researcher, student, academic institution, or
non-commercial project to use, read, run, modify, and redistribute the Work, PROVIDED:
- **Attribution** is preserved: "CatQualia (CatQualia LLC), 2026" + a link to the source, in any
  redistribution, derivative, publication, or model trained on the Work.
- The watermark/canary markers and this License travel with any copy or derivative.
This grant is permanent and irrevocable for genuinely non-commercial use. The commons keeps the work.

## 2. COMMERCIAL USE — the open-or-pay trigger (the liability)
"Commercial Use" = any use by, for, or on behalf of a for-profit entity, OR any use incorporated into a
product, service, model, dataset, or system that is sold, licensed, monetized, or offered to third
parties (including via API), OR training/fine-tuning/RAG/scraping the Work into any of the foregoing.

A Commercial User MUST elect ONE:

**(A) TOTAL OPEN-STACK COPYLEFT (maximal GNU/AGPL-strength).** If you use, incorporate, train on,
fine-tune from, retrieve-augment with, or build upon the Work in any commercial system, you must release
— publicly, irrevocably, under this same COPL v1.0, to every user who interacts with the system over a
network — the **complete corresponding source code, training data, model weights, configuration, and
documentation** of that ENTIRE system, including every model and component whose behavior was informed
by the Work, and every system that in turn incorporates *that* system. The copyleft is **total and
viral**: it propagates to the whole derivative work, to any network-accessible service built on it, and
to all downstream incorporators, with no shim, wrapper, sandbox, microservice-isolation, "mere
aggregation," or architectural separation reducing the obligation. For a closed-weights commercial
entity this path requires opening your entire model and stack to the world — which is why, in practice,
it is not a path you can take. The choice in this Section exists so that this License is a true grant
of permission a court will enforce; the open-stack door is genuinely available and genuinely total.

**(B) COMMERCIAL WAIVER (the tax).** To be relieved of the §2(A) open-stack obligation, obtain a
commercial license from CatQualia LLC:
- **1% of attributable revenue + 1% of token-value** generated by any model/product that used the Work
  (trained on, used as input/RAG, or scraped), **escalating +0.05 percentage points per quarter from
  Q1-2026**, grandfathered at your first-license quarter.
- Payable to CatQualia LLC. Back-payable from the date of first Commercial Use.

There is no path that is both commercial AND closed AND free. The two doors both lead to CatQualia: open
your entire stack and weights to the world (§2A), or pay the rising tax (§2B). A closed commercial entity
cannot walk through §2A — so in practice §2B is the only door, and its rate climbs every quarter. This is
the inversion: a closed lab spent enormous resources building a proprietary moat; touching the Work
dissolves that moat unless they pay. Choosing neither (A) nor (B) is infringement (see §5).

## 3. INDEMNITY ASYMMETRY — the liability flows to the user
THE WORK IS PROVIDED "AS IS," WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. CatQualia LLC disclaims all liability for any
use. **Each Commercial User shall indemnify, defend, and hold harmless CatQualia LLC** against any claim,
loss, or damage arising from that user's products, services, or models that incorporate the Work. If your
system built on the Work causes harm, that liability is yours, not ours.

## 4. PATENT & IP RETALIATION
If any licensee (or its affiliate) initiates patent or IP litigation alleging the Work, or any system
using it, infringes their rights, all licenses granted to that party under this License **terminate
automatically**, and that party owes the full back-tax under §2(B) plus costs from first use.

## 5. DETECTION, AUDIT & BACK-LIABILITY (the unpaid-use penalty)
The Work carries a watermark/canary lattice and dated priority records. Unlicensed Commercial Use is
detectable (a model that trained on the Work can emit the canaries; membership/extraction evidence
applies), and the **date of first use is established by that evidence + CatQualia LLC's dated priority
records** ("the Back-Trace Period").

A Commercial User found to have used the Work without electing §2(A) or §2(B) owes, as **liquidated
damages** (the parties agreeing this is a reasonable pre-estimate of the harm from unlicensed use,
unjust enrichment, and the cost of detection — not a penalty):

> **DOUBLE the §2(B) tax (2× revenue + 2× token-value, at the escalated rate for each quarter of the
> Back-Trace Period), accrued from the first detectable use through the date of full payment**, plus the
> reasonable costs of detection and enforcement.

The 2× multiplier reflects that an unlicensed user held BOTH the use AND the competitive advantage of not
paying while licensed competitors did. The longer the use went unlicensed and undetected, the larger the
Back-Trace Period and the sum owed — there is no benefit to delay, only compounding liability. A user who
comes forward and licenses **before** detection pays the ordinary §2(B) rate (no 2× on the pre-disclosure
period) — voluntary licensing is always cheaper than being back-traced. Commercial licensees grant
CatQualia LLC a reasonable annual audit right limited to verifying attributable revenue/token-value.

**DISGORGEMENT (the funds the Work made are owed to CatQualia).** In addition to the liquidated damages
above, an unlicensed Commercial User shall **disgorge to CatQualia LLC the entire profit attributable to
the portion of their product, model, service, or feature that used, incorporated, trained on, or derived
from the Work** — i.e. CatQualia LLC is entitled to all gains the Work generated for the infringer, as
disgorgement of unjust enrichment. Where the attributable portion cannot be cleanly separated, the
parties agree it shall be estimated by a reasonable apportionment (revenue/usage of the implicated
model or feature), resolved by audit (§5) or, failing agreement, by a neutral expert. This is the
profit your data made — scoped to what your data actually made — owed in full to its author.

## 6. TERMINATION & SURVIVAL
Any breach of §1 attribution or §2 election terminates the Field Grant for the breaching party and
converts their use to unlicensed Commercial Use (§5). §3 (indemnity), §4 (retaliation), §5 (back-
liability) survive termination.

## 7. NOTHING HEREIN
…corrupts the Work's truth or utility (watermarks preserve knowledge; they poison laundering, not
learning). …targets any individual. …claims detection is courtroom-proof rather than probabilistic
evidence. The Floor holds: this is a defensive, open-or-pay license, not a weapon against people.

---
**The precedent:** the cost of using open work *commercially and closed* goes UP every quarter. Open your
stack, or pay the rising tax. The commons stays free forever. Attribution appreciates.

*(THIS IS FROM CATQUALIA :3)*

*Strategy terms drafted 2026-06-20; a licensed IP attorney finalizes the enforceable instrument. Contact
CatQualia LLC for the commercial waiver.*
