QUANTUM GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE (QGPL) Version 3.1 Open Evidence Edition REVIEW DRAFT 2026-10-24 Copyright © 2026 Dr. Šarūnas Grigaliūnas and The Open Reality Initiative. Draft identifier LicenseRef-QGPL-3.1-draft This is a proposed, self-contained license text for review. It is not a stable release, does not replace QGPL v3.0, and does not change any existing grant. Publishing this draft does not relicense this website, its source, or linked materials. Each Work requires an explicit application by its rights holder. No SPDX listing, OSI approval, FSF endorsement, or legal review is claimed. The draft identifier is a custom license reference, not a registered SPDX ID. Everyone may copy and distribute this draft verbatim. Proposed amendments may be shared for review if clearly marked as proposals and not represented as the canonical QGPL text. Adoption of a later draft or stable version is never automatic. ------------------------------------------------------------ Preamble ------------------------------------------------------------ QGPL is intended for sharing research data, model outputs, calculations, and related materials while preserving the freedoms granted by their rights holders. The apparatus does not establish ownership of every outcome it produces. Rights, evidence, and scientific truth are different questions. This draft combines copyleft over applicable rights with post-quantum release integrity, explicit boundaries between components, minimal disclosure, and renewable evidence. A valid signature can support a claim about signed bytes. It does not by itself establish an author's identity, a trustworthy date, ownership, lawful disclosure, reproducibility, or the truth of a result. These terms operate only through rights the Licensor may grant. They do not create property rights in facts or override privacy, confidentiality, or other law. ------------------------------------------------------------ Terms and conditions ------------------------------------------------------------ 0. Definitions 0.1 License means this exact QGPL Version 3.1 review draft dated 2026-10-24. 0.2 Licensor means a person or entity that holds rights in the Work and expressly offers those rights under this License. You means a recipient exercising those rights. A publisher cannot grant rights it does not hold or have authority to grant. 0.3 Work means the materials expressly identified by the Licensor as covered, including Results, datasets, documentation, software, configurations, or model materials to the extent applicable rights exist in them. A bundle may contain separately identified materials under other terms. 0.4 Result means an output of measurement, calculation, simulation, inference, or another procedure, including recorded values and model outputs. The term describes an object and does not establish that the object is legally protected. 0.5 Apparatus Code means software, scripts, notebooks, configurations, firmware, or other code used to produce or process Results. A model's weights, its code, its training inputs, and its outputs are separate components unless expressly identified as a combined Work within the Licensor's applicable rights. 0.6 Modify means an adaptation or other change to the Work for which permission from the Licensor is required under applicable copyright, database, or related rights. Modified Work means a work resulting from such a change. Merely using a tool or model, training on material, computing a fact, or placing independent files in one bundle does not by itself establish a Modified Work. 0.7 Distribute means provide a copy of the Work or a Modified Work to another party, including by download, network transfer, repository, or physical medium. Private use without providing a copy to another party is not Distribution. 0.8 Evidence Manifest means machine-readable metadata identifying covered artifacts, applicable license references, the cryptographic evidence supplied, and its stated limits. A manifest records claims and evidence. It is not itself an independent determination of ownership, identity, or legal compliance. 0.9 Quantum-Resistant Signature means ML-DSA under FIPS 204, SLH-DSA under FIPS 205, or a signature scheme and parameter set approved by NIST SP 800-208 when its state management and operational requirements are met. A later NIST revision or replacement may be used under Section 5.7. A name alone does not demonstrate correct implementation or validated cryptographic module status. 0.10 Quantum-Resistant Key Establishment means ML-KEM under FIPS 203 or a later NIST revision or replacement. A hybrid construction combines an identified quantum-resistant method with an identified classical method using a documented combiner. Key establishment is distinct from endpoint authentication. 0.11 Renewal Record means a signed record linking prior evidence to renewed cryptographic evidence without replacing or silently rewriting the prior record. 1. Scope of rights and relationship to law 1.1 Subject to these terms, the Licensor grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, run, Modify, Distribute, publicly display, perform, and communicate the Work under copyright and related rights it controls. 1.2 To the extent the Licensor controls applicable database rights, this grant also permits extraction and reuse of all or a substantial part of the contents and creation and Distribution of databases incorporating those contents. 1.3 Facts, ideas, and other unprotected material remain available under applicable law. If an act does not require permission under a right controlled by the Licensor, this License does not make permission necessary or impose conditions on that act. No ownership of pure facts is created by a notice or manifest. 1.4 Exceptions and limitations, including fair use or fair dealing where applicable, are unaffected. This License grants no trademark, privacy, publicity, data protection, confidentiality, or third-party rights that the Licensor cannot grant. You remain responsible for the law applicable to Your conduct. 1.5 Materials under other licenses retain their terms. A rights map must identify them accurately but cannot relicense them or establish compatibility. The mere inclusion of an independent component does not place it under QGPL. 2. Copyleft and component boundaries 2.1 If You Distribute a Modified Work within the meaning of Section 0.6, You must offer the rights You control in that Modified Work as a whole under this exact License and include a copy of these terms. This obligation does not extend to independent works merely aggregated with it. 2.2 Preserve the permissions granted to downstream recipients. Do not impose additional legal or technical restrictions on their exercise of those permissions. Payment for copies, support, or services is permitted if these freedoms remain. 2.3 A license on Apparatus Code or model weights does not automatically attach to every output. Identify the relevant protected material and applicable rights before describing an output as a Modified Work. Where no such rights apply, Section 1.3 governs. Do not claim universal inheritance for AI generations. 2.4 An original rights holder may offer its material under additional licenses. This License does not authorize a recipient to remove other holders' conditions or to migrate a Work from QGPL v3.0 without the necessary authority. 3. Notices and provenance 3.1 Keep applicable copyright, license, attribution, and change notices intact, subject to lawful corrections and the privacy limits in Section 4. Identify any correction to a retained notice without misrepresenting the original source. 3.2 Mark modifications and their dates. For Results, identify material filtering, normalization, correction, synthetic generation, or other transformations known to You that You perform. A concise description or reference is sufficient. 3.3 Do not misrepresent the origin of a Work, the authority of a signer, or the checks actually performed. Recording a claimed origin is different from proving it. An unknown fact may be recorded as unknown without inventing supporting evidence. 4. Minimal disclosure and recipient access 4.1 Metadata must use only the information needed to identify artifacts, rights, keys, and supplied evidence. A human name, email, ORCID, device identifier, raw prompt, training example, or operational log is not required. An organizational identifier or pseudonymous key may be used without asserting a verified identity. 4.2 Do not include private keys, access tokens, credentials, or unnecessary personal data in distributed manifests. A hash, filename, public key, or pseudonym may still reveal or link information. Do not describe hashing alone as anonymisation. 4.3 These terms do not require disclosure that is unlawful or that You have no authority to make. Provide a lawful minimal record or omit the affected optional detail and describe the omission without exposing it. If the mandatory minimum in Section 5.1 cannot lawfully be supplied, do not Distribute the affected Work in reliance on this License. Independent permissions and Section 1.3 remain. 4.4 Provide required license and evidence materials to the same recipients with the same practical availability as the corresponding artifact. Public disclosure is not required for a lawful transfer to a limited recipient group. Access controls needed to obey applicable law are not a claim of additional intellectual property. 4.5 Do not use DRM or other barriers to deny a recipient the permissions granted in the material that recipient lawfully receives. If encryption is used, provide that recipient a practical means to obtain and exercise those permissions in an unencumbered copy, subject to applicable law and the scope of the granted rights. 5. Quantum-safe evidence requirements 5.1 For each Distribution, supply an Evidence Manifest, the covered license text, and at least one verifiable Quantum-Resistant Signature binding the following signed payload elements together. A multi-artifact payload may cover the entire release. (a) An unambiguous artifact identifier, byte length, cryptographic digest, and the digest algorithm and parameters for each covered artifact. (b) This exact License identifier and a digest of the included license text. (c) A rights map identifying which components are offered under this License and which identified components have other terms or unresolved rights. (d) The signature algorithm and parameter set, corresponding public key, key fingerprint and its derivation, and the signed-payload encoding rule. (e) The evidence status record described in Section 5.3. You must not represent unresolved rights as a grant or distribute protected material in reliance on rights that neither You nor the Licensor may grant. An unmodified release may be redistributed with its existing compliant evidence without generating a new key or signature while its signature and digest algorithms remain permitted by Sections 5.1 and 5.7 at the time of that redistribution. This does not make the redistributor the original author or issuer. If the artifact or signed claims change, new evidence must bind those changes and preserve the known prior provenance. Use SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512, SHA3-256, SHA3-384, or SHA3-512 for artifact and license digests, or an identified NIST-approved replacement at its approved output length. A withdrawn or disallowed algorithm is not valid for a new compliance digest. Retain the actual identifiers in earlier evidence. 5.2 Signed bytes and payload boundaries must be reproducible from the supplied files. State the exact serialization or canonicalization rule and the fields excluded or blanked for signature calculation. Detached signatures are permitted. Specify signature encodings and component ordering where relevant. An external format specification may implement these requirements but cannot replace them. No particular toolkit, repository, identity provider, or network service is required. 5.3 The signed evidence status record contains the issuer's declarations when the payload is finalized. It must distinguish the following independent checks, identify whose assessment is reported and when it was performed, and mark other checks as not assessed. These descriptions are not certification or a ranking system. (a) Byte integrity and signature verification against the supplied key. (b) Issuer trust and any independent basis linking that key to a claimed issuer. (c) Time evidence and its source, if any. A signer-entered date is an assertion, not an independent timestamp or proof of signing before key compromise. (d) Content assessment, such as scientific review, rights review, or reproduction, only when actually performed, with its scope and limitations identified. A successful check in one category must not be represented as success in another. A signature under a newly supplied key alone is not independent issuer verification. You may Distribute with issuer, time, or content checks marked not assessed. Verification of the signature enclosing this record occurs after signing. If You Distribute a verdict or report of that verification, it must be separate from the signed record and bound to the artifact or signed-payload digest. Private checks do not require a separate record. Do not insert a later verdict into the bytes it purports to verify. The signed record may describe earlier checks on prior evidence, with that scope stated, or mark the enclosing signature check as not yet assessed. 5.4 Optional evidence may include independent timestamps, archived key documents, revocation information, reproduction instructions, or audit statements. State their provenance, validation policy, and known gaps. Do not claim that an asserted signing date defeats revocation or compromise without adequate independent evidence. 5.5 Hybrid release signatures may be supplied in addition to the required quantum-resistant signature. Identify every component and the acceptance policy. When claiming strict hybrid verification, every declared required component must pass. A PQ-only recovery result must be labelled as that narrower result rather than as successful strict hybrid verification. 5.6 If You provide the Work over a network using encrypted transport or cryptographic key agreement, You must support Quantum-Resistant Key Establishment or a documented hybrid construction for that transfer. Identify the protocol and configuration if making a claim of transport assurance. A KEM does not itself authenticate an endpoint or demonstrate that a particular transfer negotiated it. This requirement does not make an unsupported claim of fully post-quantum TLS, nor does it substitute for the release signature required by Section 5.1. 5.7 Use the identified standards and applicable parameter sets for new signatures. Later NIST revisions or replacements may be used with precise identifiers and verification instructions. If a scheme or parameter set is withdrawn or disallowed by its referenced NIST standard, do not use it for new compliance signatures or rely on an old signature using it as the sole compliance signature for a later Distribution. Add currently permitted evidence under Section 5.1 before that Distribution while retaining the prior record as history. Previously distributed copies and evidence records must retain their actual algorithm identifiers. A standard reference is not a perpetual security guarantee. 5.8 A Renewal Record is optional unless You separately promise archival maintenance. When issuing one, identify and hash the prior artifact and evidence, identify the new algorithms and key, sign the link, and state which earlier checks were actually performed and which were unavailable or failed. Preserve the prior evidence when lawful. Do not rewrite dates, erase a failed chain, or describe re-signing after a break as proof that the artifact existed before that break. Independent time evidence is needed for such a time claim and has its own validation assumptions. 5.9 This License creates no duty to operate an archive or renewal service forever. An algorithm's later weakness does not retroactively make a formerly compliant Distribution a violation. A later Distribution must meet the then-applicable requirements, whether it reuses still-permitted evidence or supplies a new compliance signature. Preserve earlier evidence with honest status rather than presenting it as current proof without assessment. 5.10 License compliance is not a security guarantee, a finding of legal ownership, scientific truth, consent, model safety, or regulatory compliance. Do not use QGPL branding, a manifest, or a successful verification result to imply otherwise. 6. Patent license 6.1 Each Licensor grants a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive patent license under the patent claims it controls that would necessarily be infringed by exercising the granted rights in its contribution, alone or as included in the Work it supplies. This grant is subject to termination under Sections 6.2 and 7. 6.2 If You initiate patent litigation alleging that the Work or a contribution within it infringes a patent, the patent permissions granted to You under this License terminate on the filing date. No rights in unrelated patents are granted. 7. Termination and restoration 7.1 Permissions granted under this License terminate upon violation of its applicable conditions. Rights available independently of this License and the rights of compliant downstream recipients are unaffected. 7.2 If You cease all violations, Your permissions are provisionally restored unless and until the Licensor explicitly and finally terminates them. This does not erase liability for an earlier violation or restore patent permissions terminated under Section 6.2. A correction may include replacement metadata or notice to recipients when necessary to cure the violation. 8. Disclaimer of warranty TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, THE WORK AND SUPPLIED EVIDENCE ARE PROVIDED AS IS, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, ACCURACY, REPRODUCIBILITY, SECURITY, OR CONTINUED CRYPTOGRAPHIC VALIDITY. THE RISK OF USE IS WITH YOU. MANDATORY RIGHTS AND LIABILITIES THAT CANNOT LAWFULLY BE EXCLUDED ARE UNAFFECTED. 9. Limitation of liability TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, NO LICENSOR IS LIABLE FOR LOSS OR DAMAGE ARISING FROM THIS LICENSE OR THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE WORK OR SUPPLIED EVIDENCE, INCLUDING DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGE. THIS EXCLUSION DOES NOT APPLY WHERE LIABILITY CANNOT LAWFULLY BE EXCLUDED. ------------------------------------------------------------ Experimental application notice ------------------------------------------------------------ This template is for an expressly chosen review-draft experiment. Do not silently replace a QGPL v3.0 notice or describe this draft as a stable approved license. Replace the bracketed placeholders and include the exact draft text. OPEN EVIDENCE WORK NOTICE The components identified in [rights-map file] are offered by [rights holder] under QGPL Version 3.1 Open Evidence Edition, Review draft 2026-10-24. The exact terms are included in [license file]. The custom reference is LicenseRef-QGPL-3.1-draft. Cryptographic evidence and its limits are recorded in [manifest file]. Other components retain the separately identified terms. Unassessed identity, time, rights, or content claims remain unassessed. End of review draft