Contributors' Collective Ownership Public License v1.0 (CCOPL-1.0)
Your code made money for others. This license makes them give back.
中文版 README | 如有歧义，以中文版为准
CCOPL (CCOPL-1.0) is a software license designed for open-source contributors. It keeps code freely available while requiring commercial organizations to compensate for the use of open-source labor, and mandatorily protects users' cognitive data sovereignty.
Both Chinese and English versions carry equal legal force. In case of ambiguity, the Chinese version prevails.
MIT/Apache/GPL solved free code circulation, but left open:
- Who pays for ongoing open-source labor? Maintainers routinely face burnout and financial hardship
- Who owns users' cognitive data? In the AI era, your notes, conversations, and behavior logs are worth more than code — yet existing licenses barely protect them
- Labor captured unilaterally by capital — copyright structure determines who truly owns the code
CCOPL's answer: free for individuals and workers, paid for commercial organizations, and cognitive data always belongs to the user.
- Contributors' Collective Ownership — Copyright is collectively held by all contributors; no single entity can monopolize it
- Cognitive Sovereignty Protection — Users' cognitive data (notes, conversations, behavior logs) cannot be collected, used for model training, sold, or used for profiling
- Weak Copyleft — Modifications to the source code must be open-sourced; applications that merely call via API/interface need not be
- Commercial Licensing Mechanism — Free for individual workers, worker-owned organizations, and non-profits; other commercial organizations must obtain written authorization
| Feature | MIT | GPL | Apache | CCOPL |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free for personal use | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Commercial use requires license | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Modifications must be open-sourced | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ (modified parts only) |
| API callers don't need to open-source | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Cognitive data protection | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ (mandatory) |
| Copyright held by contributors' collective | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
We surveyed 12 similar licenses. CCOPL's core differentiators:
| Feature | CCOPL | CNPL | ACSL | PPL | HL3 | SSPL |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contributors' Collective Copyright | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Cognitive Sovereignty Protection | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Weak Copyleft | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ (very strong) |
| Differentiated Commercial Licensing | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
CCOPL introduces two world-first provisions: Cognitive Sovereignty Protection (Article 3) and Contributors' Collective Copyright (Article 6). No other known open-source license combines both.
Copy LICENSE (English) and LICENSE-zh (Chinese) from this repository to the root of your project.
your-project/
├── LICENSE # English (CCOPL-1.0)
├── LICENSE-zh # Chinese (CCOPL-1.0)
└── ...
Add to your project README:
This project is licensed under the Contributors' Collective Ownership Public License v1.0 (CCOPL-1.0).
See LICENSE and LICENSE-zh for details.
| Project | Description |
|---|---|
| ExoMind | Personal/collective life growth assistant, a local-first, event-driven AI system |
If your project uses CCOPL, feel free to submit a PR to add it to this list.
- CNPL — Cooperative Non-Violent Public License
- ACSL — Anti-Capitalist Software License
- PPL — Peer Production License
- HL3 — Hippocratic License 3.0
- Ethical Source — Ethical Source Movement