legal: adversarial and attorney review of rc3 for rc4

[zackees]

Note

Meta issue for paralegal research and open-source counsel review. It does not approve the license, apply it to FastLED software, or replace attorney judgment.

Context

PR #29 publishes FastLED Reciprocal License 1.0-rc3 as the immutable policy snapshot produced by the completed interview and research pass. The operative rc3 content is pinned at 8a92a8739f337c5a47e2ca8409b602d41c8c3d6e, with its SHA-256 and Git blob recorded in PROVENANCE.md.

Rc3 intentionally makes several material departures from MPL 2.0: a broad modifier-controlled Monetization Event; educational, research, media, and unrestricted-funding exemptions; upstream-first permanent public return of the covered delta; default GPL-family Secondary License compatibility; verbatim-only canonical license text; adopter-selected version pinning; and a bespoke termination/cure rule.

Before a final 1.0 candidate, these choices need a consolidated adversarial and attorney review that produces either a justified rc4 revision or an explicit decision to retain each rc3 term.

Proposal

Run an rc4 review across these lanes:

1. Copyright nexus and contract fallback ? test internal production, SaaS/network use, development tools used before launch, and other Monetization Events against exclusive-right nexus, formation, assent, preemption, and enforceable-remedy limits.
2. GPL-family election ? verify GPLv2-or-later, LGPLv2.1-or-later, and AGPLv3-or-later compatibility; confirm that incompatible monetization restrictions fall away after election; determine which FastLED, provenance, and AI-notice obligations can remain as reasonable notices.
3. Trigger and exemption boundaries ? adversarially test Materially Enables, $1/no-threshold events, ad-supported media, tuition and sponsored education, publisher/university transactions, grants, contractors, resellers, and attempted token or sham structures.
4. Covered source and confidentiality ? validate the file-level boundary, build/reconstruction materials, secrets and unlicensable dependencies, mixed proprietary files, upstream-first mechanics, complete PR records, partial merges, host disappearance, and continuing availability.
5. Version and text governance ? verify verbatim-copy permission, copyrightability limits, independent-license rights, exact commit pinning, only versus or later, prior-release irrevocability, and the separation between text stewardship and adopter software rights.
6. Termination, cure, and remedies ? resolve legal: review repeat and willful violation reinstatement for rc4 #30, preserve prospective-versus-historical liability, and ensure the text does not promise compelled source disclosure or a forced separate license.
7. Baseline MPL provisions ? review patent grant/retaliation, warranty, liability, defendant-principal-place law/venue, severability, and contributor-by-contributor enforcement for unintended interaction with Section 11.
8. Operational consistency ? keep Exhibit C identical to the generic AI notice; align SPDX LicenseRef, notice templates, machine-readable policy, artifact hashes, legal-review record, and immutable provenance.

Acceptance criteria

• Each lane has a proposition-level research update using current primary authority, exact license versions, procedural posture, and jurisdiction-specific weight.
• Every discovered contradiction, loophole, or material ambiguity is either fixed in rc4 or retained with a written policy and counsel rationale.
• Strategy: project-agnostic GPL/free-software compatibility exception #10's GPL strategy is reconciled with the actual rc3 Secondary License election and closed or rewritten accordingly.
• legal: review repeat and willful violation reinstatement for rc4 #30's cure/reinstatement severity review is resolved before rc4 is published.
• The review expressly states that GPL terms win after a valid Secondary License election and identifies which notices may lawfully remain.
• The review does not infer ownership of adopter software from maintenance of the canonical license-text repository.
• Any rc4 implementation includes focused RED -> GREEN consistency tests for the changed clauses, identifiers, Exhibit C equality, notice fields, and artifact manifest.
• Rc3 remains available at its immutable content commit and rc4 receives a new identifier, content digest, Git blob, and immutable source reference.
• LEGAL-REVIEW.md remains PENDING unless a named attorney records approval, date, reviewed commit, and required changes.

Decisions

• Treat rc4 as a legal hardening pass, not a reopening of the mission: the objective remains returning private covered improvements to the official project upon non-exempt monetization.
• Preserve rc3 unchanged as the interview-derived snapshot; accepted changes receive the rc4 identifier rather than rewriting rc3 history.
• Make GPL conflict priority non-negotiable for compatible adoptions, while allowing an adopter to attach Exhibit B and opt out before distribution.
• Keep FastLED software adoption, source ownership, and source-file migration outside this generic license-text review.
• Require explicit decisions rather than silently equating lack of case law with enforceability or unenforceability.

Open questions

• Should rc4 retain every named Secondary License or narrow version combinations after exact compatibility analysis?
• Should an adopting project be required to provide both an Upstream Repository and Official Reporting Location when either exists?
• Should continuing availability use a defined archival backstop in addition to the 30-day replacement rule?

Related issues

• Prior art survey — commercial-trigger/reciprocity licenses & ethical-source lineage #6 ? commercial-trigger and reciprocal-license landscape
• META: AI first-pass legal review of FastLED Reciprocal License 1.0 RC — triage, findings & prior-art survey #8 ? earlier attorney-review meta issue
• Strategy: project-agnostic GPL/free-software compatibility exception #10 ? GPL/free-software compatibility strategy
• Research: judicial remedies for AGPL-style source noncompliance (no license decision) #15 ? judicial remedies for reciprocal-source noncompliance
• legal: review repeat and willful violation reinstatement for rc4 #30 ? repeat/willful cure and reinstatement severity
• PR feat: publish monetization-triggered reciprocal license rc3 #29 ? rc3 implementation