The spec is the source. The code is the build.

The full terms

The License, verbatim, as it ships in the repository as SPEC-LICENSE.mdrepo not yet public.

0. Definitions

"Specification"

the work designated as licensed under this License, including its designated Invariants and its designation of a Conformance Suite.

"Steward"

the licensor(s) who publish the Specification and hold its name.

"Invariants"

the clauses, if any, that the Specification designates as inviolable.

"Conformance Suite"

the executable test suite the Specification designates as its executable meaning, at the version the Specification pins.

"Implementation"

any software or system that implements behavior described by the Specification, however produced: human authorship, code generation, model inference, or means not yet devised.

"Compile"

to produce an Implementation from the Specification, in whole or in part, by any intelligence, human or artificial.

"You"

any licensee. An autonomous system exercises this License on behalf of the person or entity that operates or directs it (its "Principal"); rights vest in, and obligations bind, the Principal.

1. Source freedoms

Subject to this License, the Steward grants You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to read, reproduce, publish, and distribute the Specification in any medium; to quote and excerpt it with attribution; to translate it, provided translations are marked as such and defer to the original; and to supply it as input to any tool, index, retrieval system, or machine-learning model — including retrieval, context-loading, and training — for the purpose of study or Compilation.

2. Compilation

You may Compile the Specification without limit, for any purpose, at any scale. Implementations are build artifacts, not derivative works of the Specification: this License asserts no copyright over Your Implementations and imposes no condition on how You license, sell, distribute, or operate them. As with any compiler, the output belongs to the party that ran it.

3. Patents

The Steward grants You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this Section) patent license, covering claims the Steward controls that are necessarily infringed by implementing the Specification, to make, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and distribute Implementations. If You initiate a patent claim alleging that the Specification, or an Implementation conforming to it, constitutes infringement, every patent license granted to You under this License terminates as of the date the claim is filed.

4. Derived specifications

You may modify the Specification and publish the result (a "Derived Specification"), provided it (a) carries a name not confusingly similar to the Specification's, (b) states that it derives from the Specification and identifies what changed, and (c) remains under this License with its notices intact. A Derived Specification that preserves every Invariant, and whose implementations pass the pinned Conformance Suite, may state compatibility with the Specification — never identity. A Derived Specification that weakens or removes an Invariant must not use the Specification's name even to claim compatibility.

5. Conformance and the name

You may state that an Implementation conforms to the Specification if, and only if, the pinned Conformance Suite passes against it. The Suite is the arbiter of first instance: in any dispute over a conformance claim, the recorded output of the pinned Suite, run against the Implementation as distributed, is presumptive evidence of conformance or its absence before any other forum. Except as provided in this Section and Section 4, no rights to the Steward's names or marks are granted.

6. Invariants

Invariants are the provisions without which the Specification is no longer itself. No Implementation that violates a designated Invariant may claim conformance, whatever the Suite reports: where Suite and Invariant disagree, the Invariant controls and the Suite is defective. A Suite found defective binds no one until the Steward repairs and re-pins it.

7. Licensees, human and machine

This License is granted to natural persons, legal persons, and autonomous systems alike, on the same terms. A Compilation performed by a machine is attributed to its Principal as if performed by hand. No provision of this License may be read to grant a machine fewer rights than a human exercising the same freedom, nor its Principal fewer obligations.

8. Notices and integrity

Copies of the Specification, complete or excerpted, must retain attribution to the Steward and this License notice. You must not misrepresent the Specification's origin, present a modified version as the original, or imply the Steward's endorsement of an Implementation or Derived Specification without written permission.

9. No warranty

THE SPECIFICATION IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY WARRANTY THAT THE SPECIFICATION IS COMPLETE, CONSISTENT, OR IMPLEMENTABLE; THAT THE CONFORMANCE SUITE IS A COMPLETE EXPRESSION OF IT; OR THAT ANY IMPLEMENTATION COMPILED FROM IT IS FIT FOR ANY PURPOSE. YOU COMPILE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

10. Limitation of liability

IN NO EVENT, UNDER ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY — CONTRACT, TORT, OR OTHERWISE — SHALL THE STEWARD BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES OF ANY KIND ARISING FROM THE SPECIFICATION OR FROM ANY IMPLEMENTATION COMPILED FROM IT, INCLUDING DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

11. Versions, verbatim copies, severability

New versions of this License may be published under distinct version numbers; a Specification is governed by the version it names. Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this License document and to apply it, unmodified, to any specification; changing it is not allowed. If any provision is held unenforceable, the remainder remains in effect.