Independent legal review checklist

This page organizes questions for a qualified lawyer. It is not legal advice and does not certify that the custom license is enforceable in any jurisdiction. No wording in LICENSE, NOTICE, or COMMERCIAL_USE.md should be changed on the basis of this checklist alone.

Ask counsel to review:

• ownership of the code, research artifacts, branding, and contributions;
• compatibility between upstream dependency licenses and distribution terms;
• the definitions of commercial use, covered revenue, attribution, derivative works, deployment, distribution, and related entities;
• how the 10% royalty would be calculated, reported, audited, invoiced, taxed, and enforced, including thresholds, currency, refunds, and payment timing;
• whether award, prize, grant, sponsorship, consulting, and hosted-service proceeds are covered, and whether those terms are sufficiently definite;
• governing law, venue, territorial reach, consumer and employment issues, limitation of liability, warranty disclaimer, termination, cure, and survival;
• contributor licensing or assignment, inbound=outbound policy, and whether a CLA or developer certificate of origin is appropriate;
• trademark permissions and whether the names SCIX and SXS require separate registration or usage rules;
• privacy, astronomy archive terms, export controls, and sanctions exposure;
• how the software license interacts with a CC BY 4.0 journal article and a Zenodo deposit.

Retain the lawyer's name, jurisdiction, engagement scope, reviewed commit, review date, written recommendations, and the maintainer's disposition of each recommendation. Do not describe the license as “lawyer reviewed” without this evidence.