License Guide
Understand the licenses used on ClawSouls. All souls must use a permissive license.
Why permissive licenses only?
Souls are meant to be freely installed, modified, and shared. Copyleft or restrictive licenses create legal friction that contradicts this goal. ClawSouls only allows permissive licenses so users can confidently use any soul in any context — personal, commercial, or educational.
Allowed Licenses
Apache-2.0Full text ↗Apache License 2.0
A permissive license that allows commercial use, modification, and distribution. Requires attribution and a copy of the license.
✅ Allowed
- • Commercial use
- • Modification
- • Distribution
- • Patent use
- • Private use
❌ Not Allowed
- • Trademark use
- • Liability
- • Warranty
📋 Required
- • License and copyright notice
- • State changes
MITFull text ↗MIT License
The simplest permissive license. Do almost anything with it, just keep the copyright notice.
✅ Allowed
- • Commercial use
- • Modification
- • Distribution
- • Private use
❌ Not Allowed
- • Liability
- • Warranty
📋 Required
- • License and copyright notice
BSD-2-ClauseFull text ↗BSD 2-Clause "Simplified"
A permissive license similar to MIT. Redistributions must retain copyright notice.
✅ Allowed
- • Commercial use
- • Modification
- • Distribution
- • Private use
❌ Not Allowed
- • Liability
- • Warranty
📋 Required
- • License and copyright notice
BSD-3-ClauseFull text ↗BSD 3-Clause "New"
Like BSD 2-Clause, plus a clause prohibiting use of the author's name for endorsement.
✅ Allowed
- • Commercial use
- • Modification
- • Distribution
- • Private use
❌ Not Allowed
- • Liability
- • Warranty
- • Use author name for endorsement
📋 Required
- • License and copyright notice
CC-BY-4.0Full text ↗Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
Share and adapt freely, even commercially. Must give appropriate credit.
✅ Allowed
- • Commercial use
- • Modification
- • Distribution
- • Private use
❌ Not Allowed
- • Liability
- • Warranty
- • Patent use
📋 Required
- • Attribution
- • State changes
- • Link to license
CC0-1.0Full text ↗Creative Commons Zero 1.0 (Public Domain)
No rights reserved. The author waives all rights. Do anything you want.
✅ Allowed
- • Commercial use
- • Modification
- • Distribution
- • Private use
❌ Not Allowed
- • Liability
- • Warranty
- • Patent use
📋 Required
- Nothing required
ISCFull text ↗ISC License
Functionally equivalent to MIT. Simple and permissive.
✅ Allowed
- • Commercial use
- • Modification
- • Distribution
- • Private use
❌ Not Allowed
- • Liability
- • Warranty
📋 Required
- • License and copyright notice
UnlicenseFull text ↗The Unlicense
Dedicates the work to the public domain. No conditions whatsoever.
✅ Allowed
- • Commercial use
- • Modification
- • Distribution
- • Private use
❌ Not Allowed
- • Liability
- • Warranty
📋 Required
- Nothing required
Blocked Licenses
| License | Reason |
|---|---|
| GPL / AGPL / LGPL | Copyleft licenses require derivative works to use the same license. This conflicts with the soul ecosystem where users freely mix and modify personas. |
| CC-BY-NC (NonCommercial) | Restricts commercial use. Souls should be usable in any context without legal ambiguity. |
| CC-BY-ND (NoDerivatives) | Prevents modification. Souls are designed to be customized and adapted. |
TL;DR for Soul Creators
- • Pick any license from the allowed list above when publishing a soul.
- • Apache-2.0 is recommended — it provides patent protection and is well-understood.
- • CC0-1.0 or Unlicense if you want zero restrictions.
- • GPL, AGPL, CC-NC, and CC-ND are not accepted.
License Compliance
- • ClawSouls automatically includes the full LICENSE text file when you download or install a soul.
- • You don't need to manually include a LICENSE file when publishing — we generate it from your soul.json license field.
- • If you redistribute a soul outside of ClawSouls, make sure to include the LICENSE file.