A fair-source license, four years of iteration, one principle: free where it matters, paid where it's owed. No chain. No registry. No token. No permission gate on personal use — ever.
Use, modify, and share for study, personal projects, education, research, and internal non-revenue tooling. No permission, no fee, no registry.
When someone profits from the work, they pay the maintainer per the Standard Terms they publish. The maintainer sets price and mechanism — Stripe, transfer, anything. The license doesn't prescribe.
$ opl --design-notes ✓ no on-chain registry the license text is the whole contract ✓ no system token nothing to buy, hold, or speculate on ✓ no contribution chain maintainers decide, unilaterally ✓ one external dep an HTTPS URL with the Standard Terms ✗ not OSI open source commercial use is restricted — by design
$ opl --adopt
1. read LICENSE.md the full v1.4 text
2. write your Standard Terms price + payment mechanism
3. host them at one HTTPS URL that's your only infrastructure
4. ship LICENSE.md in your repo done
adoption tools: github.com/KidIkaros/open-pact-tools
Not by the OSI definition — commercial use is restricted unless you comply with the maintainer's Standard Terms. That trade-off is deliberate: it's what funds maintenance without venture capital or donations theater.
Both assume a world of human companies. OPL also lets the maintainer choose whether AI training counts as commercial use — the question 2026 actually asks.
The pact is between maintainer and commercial user, stated in plain contract terms. No third party administers it. No governance process can redefine it.