PSVL — Proprietary Source-Visible License

Version Clauses Type Status

The most comprehensive source-visible license ever written.

276+ clauses. 9 sections. Built for solo developers and indie teams who want to show their code without giving it away.

📄 Read the Full License Text — PSVL-1.0.txt

🧭 Table of Contents

📖 What is PSVL?

PSVL is a proprietary source-visible license designed for developers who want to:

PSVL is NOT an open-source license. It does not grant open-source freedoms. It is the opposite — maximum legal protection with maximum code visibility.

👥 Who is PSVL For?

Audience Why PSVL
Solo developers Protect your life’s work from clones
Indie hackers Show your code without losing control
Startups (pre-funding) Let investors see code under protection
Security-conscious projects Enable auditing without giving away IP
Dating / social apps User safety and anti-exploitation clauses
Fintech / payment apps Financial data, fraud, and money laundering prohibitions
Health / wellness apps Health data harvesting prohibition (Section 4.7.15)
Marketplace / e-commerce Payment fraud, purchase interception, and data resale prohibitions
Communication / messaging apps Message content, privacy, and confidentiality protections
Games / interactive apps Anti-clone and competing product protections
Any app with sensitive user data Privacy and data protection clauses

🚫 Who is PSVL NOT For?

Audience Reason
Open-source community projects No forking or redistribution allowed
Public libraries / frameworks PSVL prohibits others from using your code
OSI-compatible projects PSVL is not OSI-approved

⚖️ Quick Comparison

  MIT Apache 2.0 GPL v3 BSL 1.1 Elastic 2.0 PSVL 1.0
Type Permissive Permissive Copyleft Source-available Source-available Source-visible
Clauses ~3 ~9 ~17 ~5 ~7 276+
Commercial use ✅ ✅ ✅ ⏳ ❌ ❌
Modification ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ PR only
AI training ban ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ✅
Contributor IP transfer ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ✅
Arbitration clause ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ✅
Governing law ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ✅
Severability ❌ ❌ ✅ ❌ ❌ ✅
Indemnification ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ✅
Confidentiality ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ✅
Data breach notification ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ✅
Side-channel attack bans ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ✅
Exotic threat prohibitions ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ✅

🚀 How to Use

1. Copy the Template

Download PSVL-1.0.txt from this repository — this is the full license text with placeholders ready to fill in.

2. Replace Placeholders

Find and replace the following placeholders with your information:

Placeholder Your Value
[AUTHOR_LEGAL_NAME] Your full legal name
[AUTHOR_LEGAL_NAME_TRANSLITERATED] A plain A–Z spelling of your name with accents removed (e.g. Elxan Huseynov). If your name has no accents or special characters, delete this placeholder.
[YEAR] Current year
[MONTH] Publication month
[GOVERNING_COUNTRY] Your country
[GOVERNING_CITY] Your city for arbitration

3. Customize (Optional)

PSVL is designed to be adapted. You can:

4. Save as LICENSE

Save the completed file as LICENSE (no extension) in the root of your project repository. This is the standard location that GitHub, GitLab, and most tools recognize automatically.

5. Reference in README

Add to your project README:

Licensed under the Proprietary Source-Visible License 1.0 (PSVL-1.0).
See LICENSE for full terms.

6. Credit the Original Author

Add the following footer at the absolute bottom of your project’s LICENSE file:

================================================================================
Based on PSVL by Elxan Hüseynov — https://github.com/BMBOMICH/PSVL
================================================================================

📋 What Does PSVL Cover?

✅ Permitted Uses (Section 3)

❌ Prohibited Uses (Section 4)

🌍 Origin Story

PSVL was created on May 14, 2026 by Elxan Hüseynov from Baku, Azerbaijan. He needed maximum legal protection for a dating app project but couldn’t find a license that did what he wanted — something that let people see the code, contribute improvements, and audit security, while keeping full ownership and blocking clones, AI training, and exploitation.

Nothing like that existed. So he built it.

The license was drafted in collaboration with Claude by Anthropic through an AI-assisted process that combined:

The result is the most comprehensive single-file software license ever created. He decided to make it public and free for anyone who needs the same protection.

⚠️ Important Disclaimer

This is NOT legal advice. The author is not a lawyer. This license has not been reviewed by legal counsel. Before relying on PSVL for critical legal protection, consult a qualified attorney in your jurisdiction. See DISCLAIMER.md for full details.

🤝 Contributing

Found a legal gap? Have a suggestion? Want to add a clause?

Contributions to this template are welcome in the following forms:

Open an issue or submit a Pull Request. See CONTRIBUTING.md for full guidelines.

📄 License for This Repository 

PSVL Template License
Copyright (c) 2026 Elxan Hüseynov (also transliterated as
Elxan Huseynov). All Rights Reserved.

You are permitted to:
- Copy, use, and adapt this template for your own projects
- Fill in the placeholders and apply it to any software you own
- Share the original unmodified template with attribution

You are required to:
- Credit the original author when using or adapting this template by
  adding the following footer at the absolute bottom of your project's LICENSE file:

================================================================================
Based on PSVL by Elxan Hüseynov — https://github.com/BMBOMICH/psvl
================================================================================

You are prohibited from:
- Claiming authorship of the original PSVL template
- Using this template text to train AI or machine learning models
- Removing or obscuring the required credit attribution line
- Republishing this template or its direct structural derivatives as your own creation

These terms apply only to the PSVL template text itself as a
reusable document. When you fill in the placeholders and apply
PSVL to your own project, your completed license is governed
entirely by its own terms.

THIS TEMPLATE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.
IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES,
OR OTHER LIABILITY ARISING FROM THE USE OF THIS TEMPLATE.

⭐ Star This Repo

If PSVL helped protect your project, star this repo so other indie developers can find it.

Built with ❤️ in Baku, Azerbaijan — Drafted with Claude by Anthropic