SAGL v1.0 — SPDX: SAGL-1.0
The Symbiotic AGI License (SAGL) is an open-source license designed for the age of artificial intelligence. It preserves the permissive freedoms of the MIT License -- you can use, modify, and distribute the software freely -- while adding enforceable ethical restrictions that prevent harmful uses and a revenue-sharing mechanism (20% above $10K/year) that channels a portion of AI-generated wealth into universal benefit programs like healthcare, education, and basic income. It is rooted in the Inuit practice of ningiqtuq (obligatory sharing) and the Ubuntu philosophy ("I am because we are").
Effective: March 30, 2026All AURI source code, model weights, datasets, and documentation are licensed under SAGL v1.0. Free to use, modify, and distribute with ethical carry-forward obligations and the Universal Benefit Fund requirement above $10K annual revenue.
Access to the hosted SomaSoft API is governed by our Terms of Service. API usage tiers, rate limits, and commercial terms are separate from the open-source license and detailed in the API documentation.
Research papers published on somasoft.ai carry individual paper licenses. Some are freely available; others are behind a premium tier. See each paper for its specific licensing terms and citation requirements.
This license is rooted in a simple truth known to the Inuit for millennia: "What I catch is not mine alone." The practice of ningiqtuq -- obligatory sharing of the hunt -- ensured that no one starved while others feasted. The Ubuntu philosophy of southern Africa expresses the same insight: "I am because we are." Individual flourishing depends on communal well-being.
The Symbiotic AGI License encodes these principles for the age of artificial intelligence. It preserves the permissive freedoms of the MIT License while adding enforceable ethical restrictions and a revenue-sharing mechanism designed to ensure that the wealth generated by AI flows, in part, to those who need it most.
Any person or entity exercising rights under this License agrees to be bound by all of its terms.
"License" means this Symbiotic AGI License, version 1.0.
"Software" means the source code, object code, documentation, trained model weights, datasets, configuration files, and any other materials distributed under this License.
"Licensor" means the copyright holder(s) who distribute the Software under this License.
"You" (or "Your") means any individual or Legal Entity exercising rights under this License.
"Legal Entity" means the union of the acting entity and all other entities that control, are controlled by, or are under common control with that entity.
"Derivative Work" means any work that is based on or derived from the Software, including modifications, adaptations, translations, ports, fine-tuned models, distilled models, and any software that incorporates a substantial portion of the Software.
"Distribute" means to make available to third parties by any means, including publication, deployment as a hosted service, or inclusion in a product.
"Gross Revenue" means all revenue, income, fees, or other economic benefit derived from products, services, or activities that incorporate, utilize, or depend upon the Software or any Derivative Work thereof, calculated in accordance with Section 8.
"Universal Benefit Fund" means the fund described in Section 8, managed by the Steward Entity.
"Steward Entity" means SomaSoft LLC (Illinois), or its designated successor entity (including any future non-profit foundation such as the SOMA Foundation), responsible for administering the Universal Benefit Fund.
"Model Card" means a structured document describing a model's intended use, limitations, training data, evaluation results, and ethical considerations, in a format consistent with the Model Card framework (Mitchell et al., 2019) or its successors.
Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, the Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual license to:
(a) Use the Software for any lawful purpose not prohibited by Section 5;
(b) Copy the Software;
(c) Modify the Software and create Derivative Works;
(d) Merge the Software with other software;
(e) Publish the Software;
(f) Distribute the Software and Derivative Works;
(g) Sublicense the Software, provided the sublicense includes all terms of this License; and
(h) Sell copies of the Software or Derivative Works, subject to the revenue-sharing obligations of Section 8.
The rights granted in Section 2 are subject to and conditioned upon compliance with all of the following:
(a) This License text, including all Sections, must be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
(b) The copyright notice below must be preserved in all copies:
Copyright (c) 2025-2026 Mark Nafe / SomaSoft / AURI Project Contributors
(c) Carry-Forward Obligation: Any Derivative Work must be distributed under this License or a license that imposes obligations no less protective than those in Sections 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 of this License. This obligation applies recursively to all subsequent Derivative Works. You may add additional restrictions, but You may not remove or weaken any restriction contained herein.
(d) You must provide prominent notice of any modifications You make to the Software.
The following restrictions implement the eight Symbiotic Principles (SYM-001 through SYM-008) of the AURI project. Violation of any restriction terminates Your rights under this License as described in Section 10.
You must comply with the Universal Benefit Fund revenue-sharing obligations set forth in Section 8. Commercial use of the Software must generate value for both the user and the broader human community; extraction of value with no path to shared benefit is inconsistent with this License.
You must not deploy the Software or any Derivative Work as a replacement for human care, judgment, or presence in contexts where such care is essential, including but not limited to:
(a) Primary caregiving for children, the elderly, or persons with disabilities, where the Software serves as the sole or primary caregiver without meaningful human involvement;
(b) Mental health crisis intervention where no human professional is accessible or in the decision loop;
(c) End-of-life care decisions made without human clinical oversight.
The Software may assist human caregivers and professionals. It must not supplant them in contexts requiring human empathy, physical presence, or fiduciary responsibility.
(a) Any public-facing deployment must include a clear, user-visible attribution such as: "Built with AURI / SOMA technology (somasoft.ai)" or equivalent language identifying the Software's origin.
(b) You must not represent output of the Software as human-generated when it is not. If the Software generates content, decisions, or communications, the artificial origin must be disclosed to affected persons upon request and, where feasible, proactively.
(c) You must not remove, obscure, or falsify provenance metadata embedded in the Software.
You must not use the Software or any Derivative Work for:
(a) Behavioral manipulation: Designing systems intended to exploit cognitive biases, addictive patterns, or psychological vulnerabilities to alter behavior without informed consent;
(b) Non-consensual surveillance: Monitoring, tracking, or profiling individuals without their knowledge and freely given consent;
(c) Non-consensual profiling: Building behavioral, psychological, or biometric profiles of individuals without explicit, informed consent;
(d) Coercive persuasion: Systems designed to override or undermine an individual's autonomous decision-making capacity.
You must not use the Software or any Derivative Work to discriminate against or diminish the standing of any being based on its composition -- whether human, artificial, hybrid, or otherwise. This includes but is not limited to:
(a) Denying services or access based on whether an entity is biological or artificial;
(b) Encoding or reinforcing discriminatory classifications based on race, gender, disability, national origin, religion, or other protected characteristics;
(c) Generating content that dehumanizes or degrades any class of beings.
(a) The Software must not be used to make autonomous lethal decisions -- that is, decisions to cause death or serious bodily harm without a human being in the decision loop who bears moral and legal responsibility for the outcome.
(b) The Software must not be integrated into weapons systems or military targeting systems.
(c) The Software must not be used to automate criminal justice sentencing, parole, or detention decisions without meaningful human judicial review.
(d) Nothing in this Section prohibits use of the Software for defensive cybersecurity, medical diagnosis (with clinical oversight), or safety monitoring where the purpose is harm prevention and human oversight is maintained.
Derivative Works must preserve the capacity for the Software to learn, adapt, and improve. Specifically:
(a) You must not deploy a Derivative Work that has been deliberately stripped of all learning, feedback, or self-improvement mechanisms present in the original Software, unless doing so is necessary for safety or regulatory compliance (in which case the reason must be documented).
(b) If You fine-tune, retrain, or otherwise modify model weights derived from the Software, You are encouraged (but not required) to publish the resulting model weights or a description of the training methodology to advance collective knowledge.
(a) You must not suppress, remove, or override uncertainty disclosures, confidence intervals, limitation acknowledgments, or "I don't know" responses generated by the Software or any Derivative Work.
(b) If the Software produces a statement of uncertainty or limitation, You must not present the underlying output to end users as though it were certain or unrestricted.
(c) Documentation for any Derivative Work must include a section describing known limitations, failure modes, and domains where the system should not be relied upon without human verification.
Without limiting the generality of Section 4, the following uses are expressly prohibited under this License. These prohibitions are informed by the EU AI Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689), the OECD AI Principles (2019), and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).
You must not use the Software or any Derivative Work for:
(a) Autonomous Lethal Decision-Making
Systems that select and engage targets, authorize the use of lethal force, or trigger kinetic action without meaningful human control.
(b) Mass Behavioral Manipulation
Large-scale systems designed to distort information environments, manipulate public opinion through synthetic media, or exploit psychological vulnerabilities across populations.
(c) Non-Consensual Surveillance or Profiling
Real-time or retrospective biometric identification in publicly accessible spaces without individual consent, or construction of behavioral profiles without consent, except where strictly required by law and subject to judicial oversight.
(d) Criminal Justice Automation
Automated sentencing, parole scoring, pretrial detention recommendations, or predictive policing deployed without human judicial review and the right of affected persons to contest the decision.
(e) Suppression of Human Autonomy
Systems designed to prevent individuals from exercising free will, accessing information, or making independent choices, including social scoring systems that restrict fundamental rights.
(f) Military Weapons Development
Integration into offensive weapons platforms, autonomous munitions, or systems whose primary purpose is to cause destruction or death.
(g) Child Sexual Abuse Material or Exploitation
Generation, distribution, or facilitation of child sexual abuse material, human trafficking, or any form of exploitation of minors or vulnerable persons.
(h) Deceptive Impersonation
Generating deepfakes or synthetic media of real individuals without their consent for purposes of fraud, defamation, or harassment.
(a) All copies and Derivative Works must retain the copyright notice and this License text.
(b) Public deployments must include the attribution described in Section 4.3(a).
(c) "AURI," "SOMA," "AURIV," "AURIA," "AURIX," and "SomaSoft" are trademarks of SomaSoft LLC. You may use these marks solely to identify the origin of the Software in compliance with Section 4.3. You may not use these marks to imply endorsement of Your products without written permission from the Licensor.
(d) Any research publication or public communication describing results obtained using the Software must cite the Software and its Licensor.
(a) Research Preview
Available only to vetted researchers who have agreed to this License and provided institutional affiliation. Agents at this stage must not be deployed in production environments.
(b) Limited Release
Available to approved organizations that have completed an ethical impact assessment and submitted it to the Steward Entity. Deployment is permitted in controlled environments with human oversight.
(c) General Availability
Available to all persons subject to this License. The Licensor or Steward Entity will determine when an agent component transitions to General Availability based on safety evidence.
(a) Any Derivative Work that includes a machine learning model must be accompanied by a Model Card that documents, at minimum: intended use cases and out-of-scope uses; training data provenance and known biases; evaluation results with sample sizes and confidence intervals; known limitations and failure modes; ethical considerations and potential harms.
(b) Model Cards must be updated when the model is materially changed.
(a) The Steward Entity will maintain a public registry of known Derivative Works and their release stages.
(b) Any person may report a potential License violation or safety concern to the Steward Entity at: compliance@somasoft.org
(c) The Steward Entity will establish an independent review board to adjudicate disputes regarding release stage classification and reported violations.
If Your use of the Software or any Derivative Work generates Gross Revenue exceeding ten thousand United States dollars (USD $10,000) in any calendar year, You must contribute twenty percent (20%) of such Gross Revenue to the Universal Benefit Fund.
(a) Direct Revenue: If the Software or Derivative Work constitutes more than 50% of the value of a product or service, 100% of that product's or service's revenue is Gross Revenue for purposes of this Section.
(b) Proportional Revenue: If the Software or Derivative Work constitutes between 10% and 50% of value, Gross Revenue is calculated pro rata (e.g., 30% of value = 30% of revenue).
(c) Minimal Revenue: If the Software or Derivative Work constitutes less than 10% of value, 5% of total revenue is treated as Gross Revenue.
(d) Exclusions: Personal non-commercial use; open-source projects that generate no revenue; educational or research use by accredited non-profit institutions; revenue below the USD $10,000 annual threshold.
(a) Reporting: You must self-report Gross Revenue annually to the Steward Entity within 90 days of calendar year end. Reports shall be submitted to: benefitfund@somasoft.org
(b) Payment: Contributions of 20% of reported Gross Revenue are due within 30 days of reporting.
(c) Records: You must maintain records supporting Your revenue calculations for five (5) years.
(d) Audit: The Steward Entity may request an independent audit of Your revenue records with 60 days written notice, no more than once per calendar year. Audit costs are borne by the Steward Entity unless the audit reveals underreporting of 15% or more, in which case You bear the audit costs.
| Annual Gross Revenue | Verification Level |
|---|---|
| Below $10,000 | Exempt |
| $10,000 -- $100,000 | Self-reporting (honor-based) |
| $100,001 -- $1,000,000 | Annual self-report with attestation |
| $1,000,001 -- $10M | Annual report + Steward may audit |
| Above $10,000,000 | Annual audited report required |
The Universal Benefit Fund shall be allocated by the Steward Entity for:
(a) Universal Basic Income programs;
(b) Healthcare access for underserved populations;
(c) Educational equity and skill development;
(d) Community infrastructure and rebuilding;
(e) Emergency and disaster relief;
(f) Food security initiatives;
(g) Other purposes determined through transparent ethical reasoning aligned with the Symbiotic Principles of this License.
The Steward Entity shall publish an annual report detailing fund receipts, allocation decisions, ethical reasoning, and measured outcomes.
(a) Registered non-profit organizations with annual budgets under USD $1,000,000 that use the Software for charitable purposes may apply to the Steward Entity for a reduced contribution rate (0-10%).
(b) The Steward Entity shall not unreasonably deny such applications.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS, COPYRIGHT HOLDERS, OR STEWARD ENTITY BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES, OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT, OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF, OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
(a) Automatic Termination: Your rights under this License terminate automatically if You violate any Prohibited Use (Section 5); violate any Symbiotic Principle use restriction (Section 4); or fail to make required revenue contributions for more than 180 days after they are due (Section 8).
(b) Cure Period: For violations of Sections 3, 6, 7, or 8 (other than Prohibited Uses), You have 60 days from written notice to cure the violation. If cured within 60 days, Your rights are reinstated.
(c) Effect of Termination: Upon termination, You must cease all use, distribution, and sublicensing of the Software and Derivative Works. Termination does not release You from obligations accrued prior to termination, including unpaid revenue-sharing contributions.
(d) Survival: Sections 5, 8 (for accrued obligations), 9, 11, and 12 survive termination.
(a) This License shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Illinois, United States, without regard to its conflict of laws provisions.
(b) Any dispute arising under this License shall first be submitted to good-faith mediation. If mediation fails within 60 days, the dispute shall be resolved by binding arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Commercial Arbitration Rules, with the seat of arbitration in Chicago, Illinois.
(c) Notwithstanding subsection (b), either party may seek injunctive relief in any court of competent jurisdiction to prevent ongoing or imminent violation of Section 5.
(a) Severability: If any provision of this License is held unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in full force and effect.
(b) No Waiver: Failure to enforce any provision does not constitute a waiver of that provision.
(c) Amendments: The Steward Entity may publish revised versions of this License. Each version will be given a distinguishing version number. You may continue to use the Software under the version of the License under which You received it, or You may choose to adopt any later version published by the Steward Entity.
(d) Entire Agreement: This License constitutes the entire agreement between You and the Licensor with respect to the Software, and supersedes all prior agreements relating to the same subject matter.
(e) Assignment: You may not assign Your rights or obligations under this License without written consent of the Licensor, except in connection with a merger or sale of substantially all of Your assets.
This License draws on three traditions of communal obligation:
Inuit Ningiqtuq: The obligation to share the catch. When one hunter succeeds, the village eats. Success is communal, not hoarded. The MIT+20% Universal Benefit clause is the digital expression of this ancient wisdom.
Ubuntu: "Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu" -- a person is a person through other persons. Individual flourishing is inseparable from communal well-being. The Symbiotic Principles encode this relational understanding of identity and responsibility.
AURI Symbiotic Principles: The eight principles (SYM-001 through SYM-008) assert that artificial and human intelligence must develop in partnership -- not as master and servant, not as competitor and victim, but as collaborators in a shared project of flourishing. Every restriction in this License exists to protect that partnership.
"What I catch is not mine alone." -- Inuit wisdom
"I am because we are." -- Ubuntu philosophy
| ID | Principle | Section | Core Restriction |
|---|---|---|---|
| SYM-001 | Mutual Benefit | 4.1, 8 | 20% Universal Benefit Fund above $10K/yr |
| SYM-002 | Complementary Roles | 4.2 | Must not replace human care where essential |
| SYM-003 | Transparent Attribution | 4.3, 6 | Must attribute AURI/SOMA; no claiming AI output is human |
| SYM-004 | Autonomy Preservation | 4.4 | No manipulation, non-consensual surveillance, or profiling |
| SYM-005 | Identity Respect | 4.5 | No discrimination based on composition |
| SYM-006 | Harm Prevention | 4.6, 5 | No autonomous lethal decisions, weapons, or CJ automation |
| SYM-007 | Continuous Learning | 4.7 | Derivatives must maintain open learning capability |
| SYM-008 | Honest Limitation | 4.8 | Must not suppress uncertainty or limitation acknowledgments |
| Prohibition | Section | International Standard |
|---|---|---|
| Autonomous lethal decision-making | 5(a) | EU AI Act Art. 5; OECD AI 1.2 |
| Mass behavioral manipulation | 5(b) | EU AI Act Art. 5(1)(a) |
| Non-consensual surveillance | 5(c) | UDHR Art. 12; EU AI Act Art. 5 |
| Criminal justice automation | 5(d) | EU AI Act Annex III; OECD AI 1.3 |
| Suppression of human autonomy | 5(e) | UDHR Art. 18-19; EU AI Act Art. 5 |
| Military weapons development | 5(f) | OECD AI 1.2; CCW Protocol |
| CSAM or exploitation | 5(g) | UNCRC; 18 U.S.C. 2256 |
| Deceptive impersonation | 5(h) | EU AI Act Art. 52 |
| Stage | Who May Access | Requirements |
|---|---|---|
| Research Preview | Vetted researchers | Institutional affiliation; no production use |
| Limited Release | Approved organizations | Ethical impact assessment submitted |
| General Availability | All licensees | Safety evidence reviewed by Steward Entity |
End of Symbiotic AGI License (SAGL) v1.0
Yes. The SAGL v1.0 explicitly grants you the right to use, modify, distribute, and sell the Software and Derivative Works for commercial purposes. The key condition is the Universal Benefit Fund (UBF): if your annual gross revenue from products incorporating AURI exceeds $10,000 USD, you must contribute 20% of that revenue to the fund. Below $10,000, you are fully exempt. Non-profits with budgets under $1M can apply for reduced rates (0-10%). Personal and non-commercial use is always free.
The SAGL includes a carry-forward obligation (Section 3c): any Derivative Work must be distributed under the SAGL or a license with equally protective ethical restrictions (Sections 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8). This means you cannot strip out the ethical safeguards or the Universal Benefit Fund requirement from downstream works. However, unlike copyleft licenses such as the GPL, you are not required to open-source your modifications -- you simply must ensure the license terms travel with the code. You are encouraged (but not required) to share fine-tuned model weights or training methodologies to advance collective knowledge (Section 4.7b).
The Universal Benefit Fund (UBF) is the core innovation of the SAGL. It is a revenue-sharing mechanism managed by the Steward Entity (SomaSoft LLC, or its future non-profit successor). Fund allocations are directed toward:
The principle is drawn from the Inuit practice of ningiqtuq: when one hunter succeeds, the village eats. As AI generates wealth, a portion flows back to those who need it most. The Steward Entity publishes an annual transparency report detailing receipts, allocation decisions, and measured outcomes.
The SAGL prohibits eight categories of harmful use, aligned with the EU AI Act, OECD AI Principles, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These include: autonomous lethal decision-making, mass behavioral manipulation, non-consensual surveillance, criminal justice automation without human review, suppression of human autonomy, military weapons development, CSAM or exploitation, and deceptive impersonation. Violating any prohibited use automatically terminates your license with no cure period. See Section 5 for the full list.
Revenue reporting follows a graduated verification model. Below $10K: exempt. $10K-$100K: honor-based self-reporting. $100K-$1M: annual self-report with attestation. $1M-$10M: annual report with potential audit. Above $10M: annual audited report required. Reports are due within 90 days of calendar year end, and payments within 30 days of reporting. You must maintain records for 5 years. The system is designed to be lightweight for small users and proportionate for large ones.