also known as Expat License or EX License

Some countries and federal unions are considering laws that impose liability and obligations on open source projects. They claim that these laws do not apply to open source, but usually the way the law is written, there are several loopholes that could wind up with open source projects being subject to onerous auditing requirements and legal liability, often enforced with fines and sometimes jail time.

For example, if your open source project takes donations, in some circumstances, you would wind up being required to follow the same rules that multi-million dollar software companies must follow.

To circumvent that, we are just making it illegal to use our code in any country that imposes such obligations or liabilities, or in any manner that would impose obligations or liabilities on the copyrightholder or its contributors.

Our justification? We are giving our code away for free, and we have to pay our bills somehow. And paying someone $10,000 to do a security audit of our software, when we don't even make $10,000 from the software ourselves, is not something we are willing to do. We should not be penalized for giving code away for free.

To protect yourself from fines and liability, it is recommended that you adopt this license instead of the MIT license.

You may also consider creating a non-profit association or a public benefit corporation to own and manage your open source project, again, to protect yourself.

Expat Open Source License (EX License Version 1.0)

Copyright (c) 2024 <your name or your organization's name here>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

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 OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS 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.

This software may not be used in any manner, or in any jurisdiction, that imposes liability or obligations on the copyright holder or the contributors of this project, contrary to what is stated in this license.

Feel free to use this license on all of your projects.