HOPL: The Human Only Public License
95 comments
·October 28, 2025malicka
zahlman
(Despite all the valid critique being offered ITT, I applaud the author for trying. The underlying viewpoint is valid and deserves some form of representation at law.)
> A copyleft provision would require you to share the source-code, which would be beautiful, but it looks like the author misunderstood…
This license doesn't require the original author to provide source code in the first place. But then, neither does MIT, AFAICT.
But also AFAICT, this is not even a conforming open-source license, and the author's goals are incompatible.
> ...by natural human persons exercising meaningful creative judgment and control, without the involvement of artificial intelligence systems, machine learning models, or autonomous agents at any point in the chain of use.
> Specifically prohibited uses include, but are not limited to: ...
From the OSI definition:
> 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
> The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
Linux distros aren't going to package things like this because it would be a nightmare even for end users trying to run local models for personal use.
hackingonempty
Using software is not one of the exclusive rights of Copyright holders. If I have a legitimate copy of the software I can use it, I don't need a license. Just like I don't need a license to read a book.
Open Source licenses give license to the rights held exclusively by the author/copyright-holder: making copies, making derivative works, distribution.
An open source license guarantees others who get the software are able to make copies and derivatives and distribute them under the same terms.
This license seeks to gain additional rights, the right to control who uses the software, and in exchange offers nothing else.
IANAL but I think it needs to be a contract with consideration and evidence of acceptance and all that to gain additional rights. Just printing terms in a Copyright license wont cut it.
dragonwriter
> Using software is not one of the exclusive rights of Copyright holders.
Copying is, and copying into memory is inherently necessary to use. (Of course, in some cases, copying may be fair use.)
> If I have a legitimate copy of the software I can use it,
If you can find a method to use it without exercising one of the exclusive rights in copyright, like copying, sure, or if that exercise falls into one of the exceptions to copyright protection like fair use, also sure, otherwise, no.
> Just like I don't need a license to read a book.
You can read a book without copying it.
fainpul
> You can read a book without copying it.
Let's assume it's a really short book – say a poem – and by reading it, I accidentally memorized it. Have I now violated copyright?
I think something does not add up with this logic.
pavel_lishin
> > Using software is not one of the exclusive rights of Copyright holders.
> Copying is, and copying into memory is inherently necessary to use. (Of course, in some cases, copying may be fair use.)
Has this interpretation actually been upheld by any courts? It feels like a stretch to me.
dragonwriter
> Has this interpretation actually been upheld by any courts?
That copying into RAM, including specifically in the context of running software, is included in the exclusive right of copying reserved to the copyright holder except as licensed by them? Yes, the main case I am familiar with being MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc., 991 F.2d 511 (9th Cir. 1993) [0]; note that for the specific context of that case (software that is run automatically when activating a computer in the course of maintenance or repair of that computer), Congress adopted a narrow exception after this case , codified at 17 USC § 117(c) [1], but that validates that in the general case, copying into RAM is a use of the exclusive rights in copyright.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAI_Systems_Corp._v._Peak_Comp....
TrueDuality
I haven't decided my opinion on this specific license, ones like it, or specifically around rights of training models on content... I think there is a legitimate argument this could apply in regards to making copies and making derivative works of source code and content when it comes to training models. It's still an open question legally as far as I know whether the weights of models are potentially a derivative work and production by models potentially a distribution of the original content. I'm not a lawyer here but it definitely seems like one of the open gray areas.
danaris
> Using software is not one of the exclusive rights of Copyright holders.
To the best of my (admittedly limited) knowledge, no court has yet denied the long-standing presumption that, because a program needs to be copied into memory to be used, a license is required.
This is, AFAIK, the basis for non-SaaS software EULAs. If there was no legal barrier to you using software that you had purchased, the company would have no grounds upon which to predicate further restrictions.
dragonwriter
> To the best of my (admittedly limited) knowledge, no court has yet denied the long-standing presumption that, because a program needs to be copied into memory to be used, a license is required.
This was specifically validated by the 9th Circuit in 1993 (and implicitly endorsed by Congress subsequently adopting a narrow exception for software that is run automatically when turning on a computer, copied into memory in the course of turning on the computer as part of computer repair.)
IAmBroom
> If I have a legitimate copy of the software I can use it, I don't need a license.
How can you have a legitimate copy of software without a license, assuming that the software requires you to have a license? You are simply using circular reasoning.
dragonwriter
> How can you have a legitimate copy of software without a license,
You can because someone bought a physical copy, and then exercised their rights under the first sale doctrine to resell the physical copy. (With sales on physical media being less common, it’s harder to get a legitimate copy of software without a license then it used to be.)
Galanwe
Seriously at this point who cares about US licenses ?
It has been abuduntly clear that AI companies can train however they want, and nobody will enforce anything.
Realistically speaking, even if you could prove someone misused your software as per this license, I don't expect anything to happen. Sad but true.
At this point, I don't care about licensing my code anymore, I just want the option to block it from being accessed from the US, and force its access through a country where proper litigation is possible.
zoobab
"AI companies can train however they want"
The copyright lobby wrote the EU's AI Act, which force them to publishing the list of the copyrighted works used as training data. This is an ebntrypoint to then ask them some money.
charles_f
I'm not against the idea, but licensing is a very complex subject, so this makes me think the license wouldn't hold any water against a multi billion firm who wants to use your stuff to train their AI:
> I am not a legal expert, so if you are, I would welcome your suggestions for improvements
> I'm a computer engineer based in Brussels, with a background in computer graphics, webtech and AI
Particularly when they've already established they don't care about infringing standard copyright
nakamoto_damacy
[flagged]
ctoth
I'm not going to downvote. But if the world actually looks like that to you - people as disposable biomass, everything rigged, nothing matters - that's not how reality works, that's depression. And I mean that straightforwardly, not as an insult. I'm seeing more of this on HN lately and it's worrying. People presenting total despair as political insight. If you're in that headspace, talk to someone. It gets better, but not if you're reinforcing it by posting it as reality.
nakamoto_damacy
[flagged]
amiga386
I don't think saying "humans only" is going to fix the problem.
It's actually very useful for bots to crawl the public web, provided they are respectful of resource usage - which, until recently, most bots have been.
The problem is that shysters, motivated by the firehose of money pointed at anything "AI", have started massively abusing the public web. They may or may not make money, but either way, everyone else loses. They're just ignoring the social contract.
What we need is collective action to block these shitheads from the web entirely, like we block spammers and viruses.
gwbas1c
IANAL:
I don't know how you can post something publicly on the internet and say, this is for X, Y isn't allowed to view it. I don't think there's any kind of AI crawler that's savvy enough to know that it has to find the license before it ingests a page.
Personally, beyond reasonable copyrights, I don't think anyone has the right to dictate how information is consumed once it is available in an unrestricted way.
At a minimum anything released under HOPL would need a click-through license, and even that might be wishful thinking.
amiga386
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiQ_Labs_v._LinkedIn
> The 9th Circuit ruled that hiQ had the right to do web scraping.
> However, the Supreme Court, based on its Van Buren v. United States decision, vacated the decision and remanded the case for further review [...] In November 2022 the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that hiQ had breached LinkedIn's User Agreement and a settlement agreement was reached between the two parties.
So you can scrape public info, but if there's some "user agreement" you can be expected to have seen, you're maybe in breach of that, but the remedies available to the scrapee don't include "company XYZ must stop scraping me", as that might allow them unfair control over who can access public information.
kragen
Clever, an unenforceable copyright license for free software that prohibits you from editing the source code using an IDE with autocomplete.
tensor
You probably can't even index it, depending on how you interpret AI. Any vector based system, or probably even tf-idf, could qualify as machine learning and thus AI.
kragen
Yeah, it definitely prohibits you from applying latent semantic analysis, so you could probably violate the license by indexing it with Elasticsearch, but that's a less common thing to do with source code than opening it up in an IDE. TF/IDF seems like a borderline case to me.
tensor
Putting the source in Github indexes it, as well as probably any github competitor. Hell, if you're not careful even things like Mac's spotlight might index it. Any web search engine will also index it.
gnfargbl
> If you make a website using HOPL software, you are not breaking the license of the software if an AI bot scrapes it. The AI bot is in violation of your terms of service.
Assuming a standard website without a signup wall, this seems like a legally dubious assertion to me.
At what point did the AI bot accept those terms and conditions, exactly? As a non-natural person, is it even able to accept?
If you're claiming that the natural person responsible for the bot is responsible, at what point did you notify them about your terms and conditions and give them the opportunity to accept or decline?
mpweiher
Next sentence: "It is sufficient for you as a user of the software to put a robots.txt that advertises that AI scraping or use is forbidden."
gnfargbl
Making a second legally dubious assertion does not strengthen the first legally dubious assertion. Courts have tended to find that robots.txt is non-binding (e.g. hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn).
It's a different situation if the website is gated with an explicit T&C acceptance step, of course.
ronsor
Ignoring the fact that if AI training is fair use, the license is irrelevant, these sorts of licenses are explicitly invalid in some jurisdictions. For example[0],
> Any contract term is void to the extent that it purports, directly or indirectly, to exclude or restrict any permitted use under any provision in
> [...]
> Division 8 (computational data analysis)
fvdessen
thanks, very interesting.
gampleman
I think it will be interesting to see how this sort of thing evolves in various jurisdictions. I doubt it will ever fly in the US given how strongly the US economy relies on AI. US courts are likely to keep ruling that AI training is fair use because if they reversed their policy the economic consequences would likely be severe.
But EU jurisdictions? I'm quite curious where this will go. Europe is much more keen to protect natural persons rights against corporate interests in the digital sphere, particularly since it has much less to lose, since EU digital economy is much weaker.
I could imagine ECJ ruling on something like this quite positively.
tjr
I doubt it will ever fly in the US given how strongly the US economy relies on AI.
How strongly is that? Would it really be that catastrophic to return all business processes to as they were in, say, 2022?
gnfargbl
You're talking about wiping hundreds of billions of market cap from Nvidia/Google/OpenAI/Anthropic/Amazon/Meta etc, and also the loss of a very large number of tech jobs. It's hard to imagine any country volunteering to wound its own economy so severely.
dmd
> It's hard to imagine any country volunteering to wound its own economy so severely.
Yeah, imagine shutting down all the basic research that has driven the economy for the last 75 years, in a matter of months. Crazy. Nobody would do that.
tjr
Did the AI company tech workers get summoned into existence in 2023? Would they not have most likely been working somewhere else?
And what about jobs lost (or never created) due to AI itself?
Would not Google/Amazon/Meta have continued on to advance their product lines and make new products, even if not AI? Would not other new non-AI companies have been created?
I'm not convinced that the two options are, "everything as it is right now", or, "the entire economy is collapsed".
dylan604
It's the fact that the majority of the growth in US economy is based on AI. When the AI bubble bursts, the economy will not look so good. It's what's hiding all of the turmoil the rest of the economy is suffering based on recent changes from current administration
ForHackernews
Yes: "What makes the current situation distinctive is that AI appears to be propping up something like the entire U.S. economy. More than half of the growth of the S&P 500 since 2023 has come from just seven companies: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla."
https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/09/ai-bubbl...
dragonwriter
That's not really “AI propping up the entire US economy” so much as it is the AI bubble overlapping with and (very temporarily, likely) masking, in aggregate terms, a general recession. If AI was actually propping up the broader economy, then it would be supporting other industries and the gains wouldn’t be hyperconcentrated and isolated to a small number of AI firms and their main compute hardware supplier.
ApolloFortyNine
>without the involvement of artificial intelligence systems, machine learning models, or autonomous agents at any point in the chain of use.
Probably rules out any modern IDE's autocomplete.
Honestly with the wording 'chain of use', even editing the code in vim but using chatgpt for some other part of project could be argued as part of the 'chain of use'.
kordlessagain
The fundamental paradox: This license is unenforceable the moment you show it to an AI to discuss, review, or even understand its implications.
You've already violated section 1(b) by having a AI parse it, which is technically covered in fair use doctrine.
This makes it more of a philosophical statement than a functional legal instrument.
> COPYLEFT PROVISION
> Any modified versions, derivative works, or software that incorporates any portion of this Software must be released under this same license (HOPL) or a compatible license that maintains equivalent or stronger human-only restrictions.
That’s not what copyleft means, that’s just a share-alike provision. A copyleft provision would require you to share the source-code, which would be beautiful, but it looks like the author misunderstood…