Parachute Commons License (PCL) 1.0

A license that deploys protection as it gets closer to the ground.

A parachute stays packed until needed. This license starts permissive and activates stronger protections when specific risks appear. The closer a work gets to harmful abstraction, mass replication, or unacknowledged appropriation, the more restrictive its terms become.

The Concept

The Parachute Commons License exists because of three converging problems in contemporary knowledge systems:

Authorship erosion

Work can be copied, ingested, remixed, and redistributed at machine speed. The connection between a creator and their contribution dissolves. Attribution becomes an afterthought, then invisible.

Attribution collapse

AI training pipelines, content aggregation platforms, and automated curation tools have made it structurally difficult to trace where ideas came from. Provenance is lost through architecture.

Exploitation of open work

Open licensing was built on a foundation of good faith. Good faith does not scale when the actors ingesting open work are automated systems operating at volumes no human community anticipated.

Graduated Response

The PCL addresses these problems through a graduated response model. Permissions begin broad and open. Restrictions deploy only when specific risk thresholds are crossed. The license watches for harm and responds proportionally.

It is a social compact and community standard first, and a legal framework second.

In This Guide