# Sovereignty Foundation Research License

Version 1.0 · Adopted working release · 2026-10-15

Proprietary technology. This License applies only to Software releases or commits expressly designated as governed by this version. Publication of this License alone does not relicense any repository or grant rights in the entire Foundation portfolio.

Current license and program: https://sovfound.org/licenses/

Fixed text of this version: https://sovfound.org/licenses/research/1.0/license.txt

Research, registration and licensing contact: org@sovfound.org, administered for Logos IP Licensing LLC. Section 15 governs later versions.

## Preamble

Logos IP Licensing LLC (the "Licensor" or "LIL") makes proprietary software owned or controlled by Sovereignty Foundation Inc. (the "Foundation") available under this License for research and evaluation. Researchers, institutions, companies and public bodies may study it, test it, build and evaluate integrations, benchmark it and publish what they find. Research and internal commercial evaluation may begin without registration, a fee or individual approval. Commercial test pilots involving customers or business partners require registration under Section 2.4. Live operational pilots, Production Use, sale and other commercial exploitation beyond these permissions require an express written Supplementary Grant from LIL before they begin. The Foundation retains its underlying copyright, patent and trademark ownership. Patent protection for permitted activity is limited to Section 4; no general patent license or branding permission is granted.

This is a working research and evaluation license for proprietary technology. Working groups and contributors may inform later standards, reference implementations and licensing terms. The Foundation determines its standards and release policy, and LIL issues commercial permissions within its authority. Early commercial and operational-pilot grants may be negotiated before a standard or reference implementation is finalized. Participation, registration, contribution, testing, feedback or a future standard does not itself grant commercial rights, patent rights beyond the express terms, exclusivity, certification or a promise of a later license. Any open-standard specification, patent commitment or open-source implementation requires a separate express release identifying its terms.

The Foundation maintains its IP Custody and Licensing Doctrine and other governance instruments. This License implements the use, oversight and termination obligations stated here; external policies and later guidance cannot add a restriction, remove a permission or retrospectively change this version. Silence does not imply additional permission.

## 1. Definitions

"You" means the individual or single legal entity accepting this License. An affiliate is not included and receives no right by relationship; it may accept this License itself or be named in a Supplementary Grant. An organization without legal personality acts through the legal person that accepts. An individual who exercises rights for an entity accepts for that entity only if authorized to do so.

"Foundation" is the owner and steward of the underlying IP. "Licensor" means Logos IP Licensing LLC, exercising the licensing and commercialization authority granted to it by the Foundation. LIL issues this public license, registers pilots and issues Supplementary Grants under that authority, including grants to operating companies such as Pulse Mesh LLC and other authorized operators. The underlying IP is not assigned to an operator by a license. An operator has only the rights its own grant expressly provides, including any expressly authorized sublicensing; affiliation, corporate ownership or participation alone grants nothing. LIL also administers notices and records under this License. Its authority is not enlarged by this text, and the allocation of enforcement standing remains subject to the underlying rights and applicable law.

"Software" means the proprietary files in a release or commit expressly identifying this License and version, to the extent the Foundation owns or controls the relevant rights and LIL is authorized to grant the stated permissions. Material identified as third-party material remains subject to its own identified terms. No permission to use other portfolio technology, an independent implementation or a separate service arises merely because it is described or referenced.

"Research Use" means studying, testing, verifying, benchmarking, teaching, conducting academic or scientific research, or performing security analysis, by any kind of person or institution and under any source of funding. It excludes Production Use. Research analysis, publication of findings and classroom exercises do not by themselves constitute Production Use. Commercial product or service evaluation, including client- or sponsor-directed validation for commercial exploitation, is governed by Evaluation Use and Registered Pilot Use even if described as research.

"Evaluation Use" means installing, deploying, running, modifying and testing the Software privately to evaluate its capabilities, security, performance or suitability, including developing and validating prototypes or integrations for a possible commercial product or service. It includes internal testing by a business and paid setup, testing, analysis and reporting by its contractors under Section 2.2. It excludes Production Use and, except as Registered Pilot Use permits, providing access or functionality to prospective customers or business partners. Salary, research sponsorship, ordinary infrastructure charges and fees for those evaluation services do not by themselves make an otherwise permitted use prohibited.

"Registered Pilot Use" means a private, controlled evaluation involving identified prospective customers, clients or business partners, for the Software, purpose, participants and period recorded under Section 2.4. It excludes Production Use, public or generally available hosted services, and charging for access to the Software or its functionality. Fees for the setup, testing, analysis and reporting allowed as Evaluation Use remain permitted.

"Permitted Use" means Research Use, Evaluation Use or Registered Pilot Use, including deployment on premises or on infrastructure operated for You, subject to this License. "Commercial Use" means use in a commercial product or service, ordinary business operations, or paid client work, except to the extent expressly included in Permitted Use or authorized sharing and publication under Sections 2.2 and 2.3. A commercial purpose alone does not exclude Permitted Use.

"Production Use" means operation in which the Software or its output controls, supplies or materially affects an operational process, decision, delivery of goods or services, or system on which anyone relies, other than the research or evaluation itself. It includes operational decision support, production canaries, failover and customer service, whether paid or free. Calling a deployment a test, pilot or beta does not change this. Mirrored live traffic or live data may be used for Permitted Use only where the Software cannot write to or control a live system, its output is not operationally used, its failure cannot affect operations, and reasonable separation from production is kept. A decision whether to acquire, license or later deploy the Software is not Production Use.

"Derivative Work" means a modification or adaptation of the Software, or a work incorporating its copyrightable expression, to the extent copyright permission is required. An independently created implementation or integration is not a Derivative Work merely because it interoperates with the Software, implements an interface, format or protocol the Software documents, or was written with knowledge of its specifications; it is one only to the extent it copies the Software's expression. You may use unmodified headers, schemas and stubs the Foundation supplies to build an integration for Permitted Use. This definition settles copyright only; Section 4 settles patents.

"Feedback" means suggestions, bug reports, design critiques and similar communications You intentionally submit to improve the Software. Papers, benchmarks, results, data and other research output are not Feedback unless You designate them so.

## 2. Grant

2.1 Subject to this License and during the Term, the Licensor grants You a worldwide, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, royalty-free copyright license to use, reproduce, study and modify the Software, to prepare Derivative Works, and to display, perform and distribute them only as Sections 2.2 through 2.4 permit, solely for Permitted Use. The permissions in this Section are conditioned on Sections 2.2 through 2.4, 3, 7 and 9, subject to the cure provisions in Section 11. In consideration of Your compliance this license is irrevocable except as Section 11 provides. All rights not expressly granted are reserved.

2.2 Sharing. You may provide copies, private hosted access and evaluation output to Your employees, students and contractors who need them for Your Permitted Use and are bound to observe the applicable use restrictions; they act under Your authority, and You are responsible for them. This License imposes no confidentiality requirement on publicly released Software. Another legal entity, including an affiliate or research collaborator, must accept this same version for itself; no separate Licensor registration is required unless Section 2.4 applies. You may share copies, private hosted access and evaluation output with such a collaborator for Research Use, and with pilot participants as Section 2.4 permits. Each recipient receives this License, its version and the Section 9 notices.

You may publish a fork, in source form or in object form with the source and scripts sufficient to build that object form, solely to enable Permitted Use, if it carries this License and version and the notices Section 9 requires, identifies its modifications and source version, imposes no added term, fee or technical restriction on the public fork, claims no endorsement, and contains no credentials, personal data or third-party confidential material. Marks are governed by Section 5. Private modifications need not be published.

You keep copyright in Your original modifications unless separately assigned. When You share them under this Section, You grant each recipient directly the copyright permissions in Section 2.1 over those modifications, under this version and its restrictions, for that recipient's Term. The recipient may enforce that direct grant against You. You must have authority to grant those rights. No patent rights in Your modifications are granted by this paragraph. Rights in Foundation material are granted directly to recipients by LIL under its authority from the Foundation; rights in another modifier's material come from that modifier. None of these grants permits You to sublicense LIL's or the Foundation's rights or makes a fork a Contribution under Section 6.3.

2.3 Publication. You may publish truthful results, papers, benchmarks and reports of Permitted Use, favorable or not, without the Foundation's review or approval. Identify the Software and exact version or commit tested, disclose material modifications and test conditions sufficient to avoid misleading readers, and state that the Software was pre-release and that any production use requires a separate grant. You need not disclose confidential or personal information; identify material limits on reproducibility instead. You may include limited excerpts of code, output, configuration or test material reasonably needed to explain or reproduce a result; a usable distribution of Software must comply with Section 2.2. The Foundation claims no ownership of Your independent results, data or reports by reason of this License. Your use and publication of them remain subject to others' rights and the restrictions on operational use of the Software's output. Name the Software and the Foundation only for accurate identification.

2.4 Commercial pilot registration. Before beginning Registered Pilot Use, an authorized representative registers with the Licensor the legal entity conducting the pilot, an accountable contact and notice address, Software versions, evaluation purpose, participating legal entities, environment, and proposed start and end dates, and confirms that the pilot meets this License's limits. Registration takes effect only when the Licensor provides a durable confirmation identifying this License version and those particulars. The process requires no fee or separately negotiated agreement for a qualifying pilot; it does not grant discretion to alter this License. Each participating legal entity accepts this version for itself, may be included in the same registration, and receives the confirmation.

Pilot permission lasts only for the confirmed scope and dates and while this License remains in force. A change to participating entities, versions, purpose or dates requires an updated confirmation before that change takes effect. The Licensor retains the confirmation and event history and keeps non-public registration details confidential except as needed to administer or enforce the License or comply with law. Registration neither authorizes Production Use nor enlarges Section 4's patent covenant. A pilot involving operational reliance requires a Supplementary Grant expressly permitting that use before it begins.

## 3. Restrictions

Except as a Supplementary Grant expressly permits, You may not: make Commercial Use or Production Use of the Software or a Derivative Work; provide its functionality, copies or output to a third party except as Sections 2.2 through 2.4 permit; sublicense, sell, rent, assign or otherwise transfer it or any right under this License except as Section 2.2 permits; remove, falsify or materially misrepresent a license, provenance or attribution notice that pertains to what You copy, modify or share; bypass a version, license or provenance mechanism to conceal origin, misrepresent authority or enable an unlicensed use; use it in breach of Section 7; or export or transfer it in breach of Section 12. Accurate changes needed to identify a fork, substitute a clearly identified test root, operate offline or test security are permitted if received provenance and required notices remain preserved and the changes do not falsely claim Foundation authority or enable a use outside this License.

## 4. Patents

4.1 The Foundation reserves its patents; this License grants no general patent license. During the Term, subject to Sections 4.2 and 11, LIL, for itself and under its authority from the Foundation, covenants not to assert or authorize assertion against You or persons acting for You under Section 2.2 of a patent claim the Foundation owns or controls and LIL is authorized to cover, that is necessarily infringed by Your exercise of a right Section 2 grants for Permitted Use. Each independently accepting recipient has its own covenant on these terms. For a Derivative Work it covers only infringement the unmodified Software would also cause; for an integration, only connecting to and testing with the Software through an interface supplied or documented with the Software. It does not cover an independent implementation, infringement introduced by Your or a third party's technology, use outside Permitted Use, Production Use, or manufacture or supply of a product other than copies allowed by Section 2. The covenant transfers no patent ownership and gives You no right to sublicense patents. Its legal effect is determined by applicable law. It ends only prospectively, without withdrawing protection for acts within its scope while it was in effect. LIL will not transfer its relevant licensing rights free of this covenant and will preserve the covenant when exercising its authority over a transfer of covered rights. Neither the Software nor this covenant provides clearance of third-party patents.

4.2 If You voluntarily bring or maintain a claim that the Software or a Derivative Work infringes a patent You own or control, this License ends when the claim is filed. If You voluntarily seek a ruling that a claim covered by Section 4.1 is invalid, unenforceable or unpatentable, LIL may end the covenant by notice. Neither follows from defending a claim first brought against You, compulsory process or joinder, compelled evidence, a compulsory counterclaim or an amicus filing, and neither is retroactive.

4.3 Nothing in this License restricts lawful analysis of any patent, including for interoperability, validity or design-around, or excuses breach of a confidentiality duty You separately owe.

## 5. Trademarks

No right to brand Your own product or service with a Foundation, Licensor or Software mark is granted. You may use their unaltered word marks to identify the Software accurately, state compatibility with a specified version, and reproduce required notices. Existing marks in an unmodified copy and in preserved legal or provenance notices may remain solely to identify their source. Otherwise no logo use is authorized. Modified user-facing branding must distinguish a fork from the Foundation's release, while preserving required historical notices; You may remove or replace embedded branding for that purpose. No mark may be used as the name or branding of Your own work, or to imply sponsorship, certification or endorsement. Nothing here limits a use of a mark that applicable law permits without consent.

## 6. Feedback, findings and contributions

6.1 If You intentionally submit Feedback, You grant the Foundation a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable license under copyright and other non-patent rights You control to use it for any purpose; LIL may exercise that license for the Foundation under its authority. Feedback is not confidential. This Section assigns no invention and grants no patent right: an invention reaches the Foundation's patent program only under the Contributor Grant.

6.2 The Foundation asks, and does not require, that You report vulnerabilities, harmful failure modes, active exploitation or misuse of the Software to `org@sovfound.org`, and give it a reasonable chance to fix a vulnerability before You publish it.

6.3 "Contribution" has the meaning the Sovereignty Foundation Contributor Grant gives it. The Foundation accepts material into the Software only as a Contribution under a separately executed Grant, with the affirmative submission record that Grant requires, through a channel it designates for Contributions. Receipt, review, testing or retention alone does not assign ownership or authorize incorporation. The Grant governs limited pre-acceptance review of properly submitted Contributions; an independently applicable permission, including Section 2.2 or 6.1, is not extinguished by this Section. Other material is not incorporated without the required Grant, and if incorporated inadvertently is removed on discovery. Merely using, modifying or publishing a fork under this License does not require signing the Contributor Grant.

## 7. Responsible use

You may not use the Software or a Derivative Work to surveil, profile or manipulate a person without lawful basis and informed consent; to deceive people about facts or about content's origin in a way likely to cause harm; to develop or operate a weapon whose purpose is to injure people; or to act unlawfully. LIL may publish guidance on how it reads this Section; guidance cannot amend this License, add a prohibited use, or apply to earlier conduct.

## 8. Supplementary Grants

8.1 A "Supplementary Grant" is a written grant issued by LIL within its authority that identifies the Licensee, covered Software and versions, rights added, field, territory, term and conditions, and each provision of this License it displaces. Within that scope it controls; outside it this License is unchanged. LIL decides whether to issue one. A grant to an operating company authorizes only that company and any expressly identified recipients or sublicensing channel; it does not automatically authorize customers, affiliates or other operators.

8.2 A Supplementary Grant takes effect when signed by an authorized representative of LIL and accepted by the Licensee in the manner it requires, unless it states a later effective date. LIL records it and confirms its status on request; a recording failure does not invalidate a properly executed and delivered grant. The register is private as to terms. A grant may state whether its rights survive the end of this License and may set its own assignment terms. A live operational-pilot grant must expressly identify the operational activities allowed, participants, environment, duration, applicable copyright and patent permissions, and termination or wind-down terms. Pilot registration, an application, negotiations, payment alone or silence is not that grant.

8.3 LIL may offer a Supplementary Grant to a class of licensees on fixed, versioned terms stating objective lawful eligibility criteria, the evidence required, whether eligibility is tested once or continuously, what happens if it is lost, and how the grant retires. Anyone meeting the criteria accepts through the stated registration and confirmation process; accepted Contributions may establish eligibility if the grant says so. LIL preserves identity, grant/version, acceptance and eligibility evidence, effective/end dates and durable confirmation. Retiring a grant version closes new registrations and affects existing grants only as their fixed terms provide. No future class grant or standard is promised by this License.

## 9. Provenance

Each distribution of a copy, fork or Derivative Work includes and preserves the recorded lineage it received that pertains to the distributed material: attribution files, provenance manifests, registry references, identifiers and lineage metadata. It identifies this License and version and the Software version; conspicuously states "Pre-release: research and evaluation only; commercial pilots require registration; production requires a separate grant"; and, if modified, records its source version and material changes and clearly distinguishes it from a Foundation canonical release. Private development history need not be published, but each public release records its source and material changes. A partial distribution identifies omissions and preserves the relevant received lineage without suggesting it is complete. Any root or registry a fork adds is identified as fork-controlled and not the Foundation's. Foundation registry and certification references are preserved; they grant no authority to administer those services and require no network connection or telemetry under this License. An accurate statement that an unchanged copy reproduces an identified canonical release is permitted; a modified copy may not be represented as Foundation-authoritative, approved, certified or canonical.

## 10. Pre-release

The Software is incomplete pre-release material that may change, fail or be withdrawn. Neither LIL nor the Foundation owes support, maintenance, an update or a later release and promises nothing about future features or terms. This License is not a confidentiality agreement; any confidential material comes under a separate written agreement. LIL may restrict a component or version only in a later release that identifies the restriction and its terms in that release's pointer and provenance; earlier releases are unchanged.

## 11. Term and termination

11.1 By exercising a right under Section 2 You accept this License, which then runs until it ends under this Section (the "Term").

11.2 This License ends automatically for use outside Section 2's permitted scope, intentional falsification of provenance or authority, a breach of Section 7, or the event in the first sentence of Section 4.2. For an otherwise permitted use, a correctable failure to meet a notice, attribution, modification-labeling, source-delivery or provenance requirement in Sections 2, 3 or 9 starts a thirty-day cure period when You discover it or receive notice, whichever is earlier. The License, its permissions and its patent covenant remain in effect during that period; timely cure prevents termination for that failure. If not cured, the License ends when the period expires, without retroactively withdrawing protection for acts covered during it. This cure rule controls notwithstanding the same failure falling under another Section or being described as a condition of permission. It does not authorize a use outside the granted scope or excuse intentional misrepresentation. For any other breach, LIL may give notice and the License ends thirty days later unless You have cured.

11.3 LIL may end the preview of identified Software or versions by notice at the canonical program address, effective ninety days after posting. LIL may also terminate as to You by a notice stating specific conduct that materially threatens human agency, truth or safety within the prohibitions of Section 7, effective ten days after notice, or immediately where continued use presents a material safety risk. This power cannot be used to add a prohibited use through later guidance or an external policy. A properly executed Supplementary Grant controls its own survival and wind-down as stated in Section 8.

11.4 When Your License ends You stop using the Software and Derivative Works and destroy or return Your copies within thirty days, except one archival copy kept for compliance records, copies kept under law, a legal hold or a binding records policy, and routine backups deleted in ordinary course; retained copies are not used. Material already published under Section 2.3 may remain public. Ending Your License does not make an act that complied with it when performed a breach, does not affect a downstream recipient under its own License, and affects a Supplementary Grant only as that Grant provides. Section 4.1 as to previously covered acts, Sections 4.2, 4.3, 6.1, 9, 10, 11.4, 13 and 16 survive; Section 14 survives for one year as to conduct before the end.

## 12. Compliance

You will comply with applicable law in Your receipt, use and transfer of the Software, including export-control and sanctions law, and will not receive, use or transfer it where that law prohibits it. On request the Foundation provides any export classification it holds, without warranty.

## 13. Disclaimer and liability

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT THE LAW PERMITS, THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PURPOSE. THE FOUNDATION, THE LICENSOR AND THEIR OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES AND AGENTS ARE NOT LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES OR FOR LOST DATA, PROFITS, REVENUE OR GOODWILL, AND THEIR AGGREGATE LIABILITY UNDER THIS LICENSE IS ONE HUNDRED UNITED STATES DOLLARS.

## 14. Attestation and notices

On written request from LIL, not more than once a year unless it reasonably suspects material breach, an authorized representative of Yours will attest within thirty days to compliance. If reasonably necessary to resolve specific material concerns that the attestation does not resolve, LIL or the Foundation may inspect relevant compliance records, on reasonable notice and under confidentiality safeguards, using an independent reviewer where appropriate. The request must identify the concern and be proportionate; it grants no unrestricted system access, continuous telemetry or right to demand unrelated information. You need not disclose source code, privileged material, personal data, or confidential research or security information; reasonable redacted records or independent verification may be used instead. LIL and the Foundation keep non-public responses confidential except as needed for enforcement or required by law.

Notices and registrations to LIL go to org@sovfound.org until a replacement contact is published at the canonical program address. A contact change affects only later notices; it does not alter this License. Research and internal Evaluation Use require no account or registered notice address. Pilot contacts keep their designated address current. Individual notices are directed to Your last designated or otherwise reliably identified contact. Only a general preview-ending notice under Section 11.3 may be given by public posting alone; LIL also sends it to recorded pilot contacts. Individual ethics or safety notices must identify the conduct and effective date.

## 15. Versions

The Foundation's current license page at https://sovfound.org/licenses/ identifies the current working version and may change as feedback is evaluated. Each issued version has permanently archived, fixed text at its own address and an exact-text digest. A substantive correction or change creates a new version, never a silent replacement of existing terms. A Software release identifies its governing version. A later version governs that release only if You and LIL expressly elect it, or a separately executed grant expressly provides for that change. Changes to program guidance, working-group recommendations, registration forms or contact details do not change permissions already granted. A matching archived copy controls if the website is unavailable.

## 16. General

Colorado law governs this License, with exclusive jurisdiction in the state and federal courts in Denver, Colorado, except that either party may seek interim relief in any competent court and a public entity is bound by that choice only so far as its own law permits. No immunity or jurisdictional defense is waived where applicable law does not permit waiver. LIL and You may enforce their contractual rights; the Foundation is an intended beneficiary of the ownership, use, trademark, provenance and oversight protections and may enforce them to the extent permitted by law. A modifier and recipient may enforce their direct copyright grant under Section 2.2. This clause does not manufacture statutory standing or enlarge anyone's IP ownership. You may not assign this License without LIL's written consent within its authority from the Foundation. LIL may transfer its obligations only to an authorized successor bound to preserve existing permissions and Foundation stewardship. This License and any applicable Supplementary Grant are the entire agreement about the licensed use. An unenforceable provision is enforced to the extent lawful and the rest remains in effect.

Copyright © 2026 Sovereignty Foundation Inc. All rights reserved. Licensed and administered by Logos IP Licensing LLC under authority from the Foundation.