LICENSE

# Blackcat Founder Network License 1.0

Status: active project license text for the Blackcat Covered System  
Licensor: Black Cat Academy s. r. o.  
Contact: blackcatacademy@protonmail.com

This license is intended to keep the source code publicly auditable while reserving production and network-use monetization rights for the founder and any duly designated future steward.

This document is the active project license text for the Blackcat Covered System. It is not legal advice, and external legal review remains recommended.

## 1. Purpose

The Software is made available for inspection, audit, local development, testing, and non-production experimentation. Production and network operation are not free rights under this license. They are conditional rights tied to payment of the Founder Fee described below and in the applicable fee policy.

The Licensor considers this structure fair because the Founder Fee is intended to reflect:
- the founder's original concept and system architecture,
- the network model and operational design,
- the bootstrapping of the ecosystem and registry,
- and the continuing motivation for maintenance, hardening, and future development.

The Founder Fee is not an investment product, security, or speculative asset. It is a participation fee for production use of the Software and the official ecosystem built around it.

The founder further declares that a central policy objective of this model is to keep the Software practically reachable to the broadest reasonable class of interested users and operators. The founder does not seek to prohibit lawful successors from enforcing valid fee rights or pursuing greater lawful compensation where justified, but does expressly state that such enforcement should not be interpreted or pursued in a manner that materially suppresses, prices out, or disproportionately harms smaller, weaker, or economically fragile layers of the ecosystem if such layers exist at the relevant time.

## 2. Definitions

For the purposes of this license:

- `Software` means this repository, its source code, scripts, schemas, manifests, fixtures, documentation, configuration files, and any covered releases, branches, or derivative works based on them.
- `Covered System` means the integrated family of official Blackcat repositories, packages, services, manifests, gateways, installers, schemas, future internal components, and internal workspace materials maintained in good faith as parts of the same operating system for licensing and deployment purposes, including the repositories and internal directories currently kept under the top-level `BLACKCAT_MESH_NEXUS` workspace unless a signed public Founder Notice expressly excludes a component.
- `Production Use` means any use of the Software or a derivative in connection with a live website, e-shop, customer-facing service, gateway, hosted environment, or operational system beyond internal evaluation, internal testing, or non-public research.
- `Network Use` means providing access to the Software or its functionality over a network, whether publicly or privately, including gateway operation, SaaS, managed hosting, shared hosting, API exposure, or multi-tenant use.
- `Deployment` means a production site, shop, gateway, hosted instance, or other operational installation covered by the current fee policy.
- `Founder Fee` means the required fee reserved to the founder or founder-designated receiving address as specified in the applicable fee policy.
- `Reference Inflation Index` means the public inflation or value-preservation benchmark designated in the applicable fee policy or Founder Notice under the published benchmark hierarchy, and is not intended to depend permanently on any one state, union, currency bloc, or present-day monetary system.
- `Lawful Successor` means a person or entity that validly succeeds to the founder's rights by inheritance, assignment, merger, corporate succession, or another lawful transfer recognized by applicable law.
- `Liquid Settlement Asset` means any currency, digital asset, reserve-like asset, or other payment medium that is sufficiently liquid, publicly valued, and reasonably convertible so that it can represent substantially equivalent real economic value at the time of settlement.
- `Accessibility Principle` means the good-faith rule that the Founder Fee should remain a minor participation burden and must not be increased to a level that materially impairs practical accessibility of the Software for ordinary independent hosts, web operators, e-shop operators, gateway operators, or other comparable non-enterprise deployments.
- `Founder Accessibility Declaration` means the founder's express statement that monetization, succession, interpretation, and enforcement of this licensing model should preserve accessibility for the broadest reasonable class of interested operators and should not become a tool of disproportionate pressure against smaller or weaker participants.
- `Non-Exclusionary Enforcement Covenant` means the interpretive and performance covenant that fee collection, remedies, suspension, termination, and litigation should be pursued in good faith, proportionately, and in a manner aimed at preserving lawful economic rights without using the license primarily as a tool to price out or crush smaller or weaker participants who are acting in substantial good faith.
- `Mandatory Internal Component` means an official internal repository, package, service, or module without which the relevant ordinary deployment class cannot practically operate in its intended baseline mode.
- `Ordinary Deployment Class` means a standard non-premium, non-enterprise deployment profile used as a baseline for fee coverage, accessibility review, and anti-capture interpretation.
- `Paid Replacement Component` means an official repository, package, service, module, or hosted dependency that is separately monetized and is presented as the new or preferred path for functionality previously available to an Ordinary Deployment Class.
- `Maintenance Capture` means intentional or unreasonably negligent decay, deprecation, compatibility breakage, support withdrawal, documentation withdrawal, security-maintenance withdrawal, or operational pressure whose practical effect is to force an Ordinary Deployment Class toward a separately monetized Paid Replacement Component, control service, support layer, or premium class.
- `Successor Value Standard` means a publicly described replacement unit of account or value-preservation benchmark designated in good faith by the founder, founder-controlled entity, or Lawful Successor if the reference currency, settlement currency, or Reference Inflation Index becomes unavailable, unreliable, legally discontinued, or economically non-functional.
- `Steward` means a future maintainer, operator, foundation, or governing entity explicitly designated by the founder or founder-controlled entity in a signed public notice.
- `Steward Fee` means an additional fee that a validly designated Steward may impose for maintenance, development, support, or operation of the official ecosystem.
- `Founder Notice` means a signed written notice published through an Authorized Notice Channel by the Licensor, founder-controlled entity, or Lawful Successor that updates receiving addresses, fee instructions, waivers, Steward designations, or other operational matters expressly allowed by this license.
- `Authorized Notice Channel` means a repository path, official registry endpoint, Arweave record, or other public channel designated in the fee policy and accompanied by the currently recognized signing method for authenticity verification.
- `Founder Signing Key` means the public key, signature method, or equivalent public authenticity mechanism currently designated for validating Founder Notices and succession notices.
- `Proof of Payment` means a valid Arweave transaction identifier, with the tags and conditions required by the applicable fee policy, sufficient to demonstrate payment of the Founder Fee.
- `Official Registry` means the public listing, verification process, trust manifest, or other official ecosystem service operated or recognized by the Licensor.
- `Non-Production Use` means local development, security review, internal staging, internal QA, personal experimentation, or academic research that is not customer-facing and not used to provide a live service.

## 3. License Grant

Subject to compliance with this license, the Licensor grants you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable right to:

- view, read, and audit the Software;
- compile and run the Software for Non-Production Use;
- modify the Software for internal evaluation, testing, and security research;
- create internal forks for Non-Production Use;
- publish commentary, audit findings, benchmarks, and interoperability notes, provided you do not disclose secrets or misrepresent the origin of the Software.

No production, network, or commercial operating right is granted except as explicitly provided in Section 4.

## 4. Production and Network Use Condition

You may not engage in Production Use or Network Use of the Software or any derivative work unless:

- the Founder Fee has been paid in accordance with the current fee policy;
- you possess valid Proof of Payment;
- your use complies with any deployment-count, gateway-count, or site-count rules defined in the fee policy;
- and your rights have not been terminated under this license.

This requirement applies equally to:

- unmodified use of the Software;
- modified versions of the Software;
- hosted services built on top of the Software;
- gateways, registries, or public websites operated using the Software;
- and forks or derivatives that remain based on this codebase.

For avoidance of doubt, when the Software is used as part of the Covered System, repository separation, package separation, or internal modularization should not by itself create multiple independent Founder Fee obligations for the same covered deployment unless the current fee policy clearly defines a genuinely separate coverage class in good faith.

## 5. Founder Fee Reservation

The Founder Fee is expressly reserved to the founder, founder-designated receiving address, founder-controlled entity, or Lawful Successor, as applicable under the then-current published fee policy or Founder Notice.

Unless the founder or founder-controlled entity publishes an explicit written waiver or transfer in a Founder Notice:

- no operator has the right to run the Software in Production Use or Network Use without payment of the Founder Fee;
- no future Steward may remove, cancel, replace, or nullify the Founder Fee;
- and no grant under this license shall be interpreted as creating a royalty-free right of production operation.

The Founder Fee is intended to remain small enough not to block adoption, but meaningful enough that production participation in the official Blackcat ecosystem is not entirely free of contribution.

The founder or founder-controlled entity also reserves the explicit right to adjust the Founder Fee prospectively in order to preserve its real economic value over time. Unless a published fee policy states a more specific formula, future upward adjustments may be made periodically and should be no less protective than indexation by the applicable Reference Inflation Index or another successor benchmark designated under the published benchmark hierarchy.

Absent an explicit written waiver, deflation or a temporary negative reading in the applicable Reference Inflation Index does not require a reduction of the previously published Founder Fee.

To protect operators and preserve fairness, ordinary fee updates should not be published more than once in any rolling twelve-month period, and the increase in the published Founder Fee for the same coverage unit should not exceed the cumulative change in the applicable Reference Inflation Index since the last published schedule plus an additional 0.5 percentage points, unless a more specific cap is published in the fee policy.

An adjustment required solely to reflect a legal currency conversion, redenomination, successor-currency substitution, or a transition to a valid Successor Value Standard should be treated as a technical preservation update rather than an additional discretionary price increase, provided the resulting schedule is intended in good faith to preserve substantially equivalent real economic value.

## 6. Future Stewardship

The founder may designate one or more future Stewards by Founder Notice.

A duly designated Steward may:

- maintain the codebase,
- operate the Official Registry,
- provide support, hosting, or security services,
- and impose an additional Steward Fee for continued development or ecosystem operation.

However, a Steward Fee does not replace the Founder Fee unless the founder expressly states so in a signed Founder Notice.

Any Steward Fee, development fee, maintenance fee, registry-operation fee, or similar successor charge is intended to remain subject to the same Accessibility Principle, Founder Accessibility Declaration, Non-Exclusionary Enforcement Covenant, Covered System interpretation, anti-capture rules, and prospective-only fairness guardrails that apply to the Founder Fee, unless a later published rule is more protective of ordinary operators.

The default rule is cumulative:

- Founder Fee continues to be owed; and
- Steward Fee may additionally be owed if the current policy says so.

## 7. Fee Policy and Payment Mechanics

The commercial and production-use conditions of this license are implemented through the applicable fee policy, including:

- amount or formula of the Founder Fee;
- any reference value standard, exchange method, or settlement method;
- the categories of Liquid Settlement Asset that may be used to satisfy the Founder Fee;
- the valuation method and timing used to determine whether a Liquid Settlement Asset satisfied the published economic obligation;
- any indexation formula or inflation-adjustment method;
- the applicable Reference Inflation Index or successor benchmark;
- any Successor Value Standard and the triggering conditions for using it;
- the Accessibility Principle or any published affordability guardrail used to prevent fee schedules from becoming materially exclusionary;
- the Founder Accessibility Declaration or any corresponding non-predatory enforcement guidance;
- the Non-Exclusionary Enforcement Covenant and any cure-first or proportional-remedy rules implementing it;
- receiving address or accepted payment rail;
- required Arweave tags;
- proof format;
- cure period for late payment;
- scope of a payment, including whether it covers a site, gateway, deployment, or operator;
- and any grace period, waiver, or program for community or charitable use.

The fee policy may be updated by the Licensor or founder-controlled entity by published revision or Founder Notice, provided that updates are applied prospectively and in good faith.

Unless the fee policy expressly states otherwise, a compliant payment made under a then-current published fee schedule remains valid for the scope it originally covered and does not become retroactively non-compliant merely because the Founder Fee is later increased.

If ordinary fiat currencies, settlement rails, or inflation indices become unavailable, are legally replaced, or cease to function as a meaningful economic benchmark, the founder, founder-controlled entity, or Lawful Successor may designate a successor benchmark or Successor Value Standard in good faith so that the Founder Fee remains economically meaningful and enforceable in future conditions.

Unless the then-current fee policy states otherwise, the Founder Fee may be satisfied and proven using any Liquid Settlement Asset that, at the time of payment, represents no less than the required published economic value for the relevant coverage unit. The validity of payment should turn on substantially equivalent real economic satisfaction of the published obligation, not on the continued existence of any one specific fiat currency.

The fee policy and any Founder Notice should be interpreted consistently with the Accessibility Principle. The Founder Fee may preserve real economic value and may be adjusted within the published fairness guardrails, but it should not be raised to a level that materially undermines the practical availability of the Software for ordinary hosting providers, web operators, e-shop operators, gateway operators, or other comparable non-enterprise deployments for whom the ecosystem is intended.

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, any ambiguous question concerning fee scope, successor monetization rights, remedies, or enforcement posture should be interpreted consistently with the Founder Accessibility Declaration. The founder's expressed intent is that lawful successors may preserve and enforce the economic rights attached to this model, but should not use those rights in a manner that turns the licensing structure into a mechanism of exclusionary extraction against smaller, weaker, or more economically fragile participants in the ecosystem.

The same interpretive rule applies to the Covered System as a whole. Neither the Licensor, any Steward, nor any Lawful Successor should use repository splits, internal package splits, newly introduced Mandatory Internal Components, artificial reclassification of an Ordinary Deployment Class, or version-line restructuring as a disguised method of multiplying unavoidable founder-fee equivalents or bypassing the Accessibility Principle for ordinary operators.

The same anti-capture rule also applies to maintenance posture, compatibility posture, and operational dependencies. Neither the Licensor, any Steward, nor any Lawful Successor should use Maintenance Capture, artificial end-of-life pressure, withheld protocol or migration documentation, withheld baseline security maintenance, intentional incompatibility, or mandatory proprietary control services as a disguised method of forcing ordinary operators into separately monetized Paid Replacement Components, hosted dependencies, premium classes, or duplicate fee surfaces.

If a Mandatory Internal Component for an Ordinary Deployment Class is replaced, deprecated, or materially changed, the default good-faith expectation is that the Licensor, Steward, or Lawful Successor should either:

- maintain a reasonably usable security and compatibility path for a reasonable transition period;
- or provide a compatible successor inside the same integrated founder-fee surface for the same covered deployment class.

A separately priced Paid Replacement Component may be offered only where its optional nature is genuine or where the baseline coverage class remains practically operable without it. An already-paid ordinary deployment should not lose the practical ability to operate solely because the governing entity prefers to monetize a replacement path.

Unless a narrower rule is separately and clearly authorized in the published fee policy on a non-exclusionary basis, an already validly paid production right should not be made dependent on a new mandatory always-online proprietary entitlement service, license server, or hosted control plane if a public, offline-verifiable, or self-hostable proof path remains reasonably possible.

## 7B. Order of Precedence

Unless a later valid replacement license states otherwise, the order of precedence for conflicting terms is:

1. a signed written waiver or transfer expressly authorized under this license;
2. this license;
3. the current fee policy for fee amount, settlement, valuation, and payment mechanics;
4. the registry terms for listing, support, and verification operations;
5. the trademark policy for name, logo, and badge use;
6. the contributor terms, but only with respect to contributions and contributor rights.

No Founder Notice, registry rule, support policy, or operational announcement should be interpreted to silently amend this license except where this license expressly permits such an update by Founder Notice.

## 7C. Authenticity of Founder Notices and Successor Notices

To reduce future disputes, Founder Notices and succession notices should be authenticated through the currently recognized Founder Signing Key or a clearly published successor authenticity method.

Unless an emergency security issue requires faster action, an ordinary notice affecting fees, settlement methods, coverage scope, or successor administration should:

- be published through an Authorized Notice Channel;
- identify the effective date;
- identify the policy or document version being changed;
- and provide a reasonable prospective notice period before taking effect.

Emergency security or anti-fraud notices may take effect sooner to the extent reasonably necessary, but should still be documented publicly as soon as practical.

## 7D. Succession Proof and Authority Chain

A person or entity asserting status as a Lawful Successor should publish a good-faith public succession notice sufficient to establish authority without requiring unnecessary disclosure of private material.

Such a notice should, where reasonably possible:

- identify the claimed basis of succession;
- identify the current Founder Signing Key or successor authenticity method;
- identify the scope of rights claimed;
- and identify where supporting evidence, redacted evidence, or independent attestation may be reviewed.

Until such a succession notice is publicly issued through an Authorized Notice Channel, no purported successor should be presumed to have authority to change fee schedules, redirect Founder Fee payments, issue waivers, or designate Stewards.

## 7A. Good-Faith and Non-Exclusionary Enforcement Covenant

The Licensor, any founder-controlled entity, and any Lawful Successor exercising rights under this license should do so in a manner consistent with the Non-Exclusionary Enforcement Covenant.

Accordingly, absent fraud, deliberate evasion, impersonation, repeated refusal to cure, security abuse, or other materially bad-faith conduct, enforcement should ordinarily prefer:

- notice and a reasonable cure opportunity;
- proof-of-payment correction;
- prospective compliance;
- a payment plan or equivalent remedial path for smaller operators acting in substantial good faith;
- and proportional remedies that protect the economic right without unnecessarily destroying lawful access.

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, the rights reserved by this license should not be exercised primarily for the purpose of:

- forcing weaker operators out of the ecosystem where compliant cure is realistically available;
- converting a minor participation charge into a de facto exclusionary barrier;
- or leveraging technical or legal ambiguity to impose a burden that is disproportionate to the actual founder economic interest being protected.

Nothing in this Section prevents strong enforcement, suspension, termination, or legal action against operators engaged in willful non-payment, intentional fee evasion, abuse of official marks, fraud, malicious security conduct, or repeated refusal to cure after reasonable notice.

## 8. Proof and Compliance

On reasonable written request, an operator must provide Proof of Payment and sufficient information to identify the covered deployment.

Failure to provide Proof of Payment within the cure period stated in the fee policy or written notice constitutes a material breach of this license.

The Licensor may use public on-chain evidence, public service observation, or other lawful evidence to assess compliance.

## 9. Non-Production Freedom

Nothing in this license prohibits:

- reading or auditing the source;
- public discussion of the architecture;
- internal security testing;
- academic analysis;
- local proof-of-concept work;
- or non-public experimentation,

provided that such activity does not become Production Use or Network Use.

## 10. Restrictions

You may not, unless separately authorized in writing:

- use the Software in Production Use or Network Use without the required Founder Fee having been paid;
- offer the Software as a hosted or managed service without compliance with the fee policy;
- remove, falsify, or conceal fee-related notices, attribution notices, or official compliance instructions from official distributions;
- falsely claim verified or official status;
- imply endorsement, sponsorship, or certification by the Licensor without written permission;
- use the Software in a way that is intentionally structured to evade the Founder Fee or Steward Fee;
- or interpret or restructure the Covered System in a way that treats ordinary Mandatory Internal Components as separately unavoidable fee triggers without a clear, published, and non-exclusionary basis in the fee policy.

## 11. Derivative Works and Forks

Forking and modification for Non-Production Use are allowed under this license.

If a fork, derivative, or modified version is placed into Production Use or Network Use and remains based on this codebase, that use remains subject to this license and the Founder Fee unless separately licensed in writing.

This license does not claim ownership of abstract ideas outside copyright law. It governs the use of this codebase, its derivatives, the official ecosystem, and the production rights granted by the Licensor.

## 12. Trademark and Branding

No trademark rights are granted under this license.

Use of the project name, logos, verified marks, certification marks, or other branding is governed separately by trademark policy and registry terms.

Forks and derivatives must not be presented as the official Blackcat network unless separately authorized.

## 13. Official Registry and Verified Listing

Inclusion in the Official Registry, verified listing, trust manifest, or similar official ecosystem services may require:

- payment of the Founder Fee;
- proof-of-domain or proof-of-operator control;
- and compliance with the registry terms and operational requirements.

The Licensor or valid Steward may suspend or remove an entry that is materially non-compliant, including for non-payment.

## 14. Contributions and Relicensing

Unless a separate contributor agreement states otherwise, no outside contribution obligates the Licensor to relicense the Software under Open Source terms.

The Licensor may require a Contributor License Agreement, copyright assignment, or equivalent contributor terms for accepted patches.

## 15. Termination

This license terminates automatically upon material breach, including:

- non-payment of the required Founder Fee;
- failure to provide Proof of Payment after notice and cure opportunity;
- unauthorized Production Use or Network Use;
- or unauthorized use of official branding.

Upon termination, you must cease the infringing use immediately. On request, you must confirm cessation of the unauthorized production operation within a reasonable time.

Termination does not waive any accrued payment obligation or other remedy.

## 16. Limited Reinstatement

The Licensor may, but is not required to, reinstate rights after cure of a breach.

Reinstatement may be conditioned on:

- payment of overdue fees,
- payment of a reinstatement fee,
- updated Proof of Payment,
- or operational remediation.

## 17. Disclaimer

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT.

## 18. Limitation of Liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE LICENSOR SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, PUNITIVE, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION.

## 19. Governing Law, Language, and Forum

This license shall be governed by the laws of the Slovak Republic, excluding conflict-of-law rules.

The authoritative language of this license and its active companion documents is English. Translations may be published for convenience only.

Exclusive jurisdiction and venue for disputes arising out of or relating to this license, its active companion documents, contributor terms, registry operations, or official trademark use shall lie in the courts located in Bratislava, Slovak Republic, or their lawful successor courts with subject-matter jurisdiction.

Nothing in this section prevents the Licensor, founder-controlled entity, Steward, or Lawful Successor from seeking urgent provisional or injunctive relief where reasonably necessary to stop impersonation, key compromise, payment-address fraud, active trademark misuse, or material security abuse.

## 20. Entire Agreement and Companion Documents

This license is intended to operate together with the active companion documents published for the Covered System, including the fee policy, trademark policy, registry terms, contributor terms, notice-channel rules, dispute-resolution rules, notice-signing workflow, system-scope policy, affordability baseline, anti-circumvention policy, and the tracked licensing system notice.

Section 7B controls the order of precedence for conflicts among those materials.

No companion document, registry rule, support rule, notice, or operational policy should be interpreted to silently reduce the production-use restrictions, fee reservation, accessibility guardrails, or anti-capture protections of this license unless this license expressly permits that change through a signed Founder Notice.

## 21. Survival, Severability, and No Waiver

If any provision of this license is held unenforceable or invalid, the remaining provisions should remain in effect to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law.

The provisions concerning fee obligations, payment proof, trademark separation, contributor relicensing authority, limitations on official status, accrued remedies, and any clause that by its nature is intended to survive should survive termination or expiration of rights.

No delay or failure by the Licensor, founder-controlled entity, Steward, or Lawful Successor to enforce a right under this license should be treated as a waiver of that right unless the waiver is expressly stated in a signed written notice.

## 22. Practical Note

This license is designed to reserve monetization rights in the code and official ecosystem. It cannot stop independent clean-room reimplementations or similar business ideas created without use of this code.