The Jonah License: JoLi#
The Jonah License (JoLi) is a CC0-based content license designed for existential emergencies. It makes sharing as easy as possible and encourages gentle kind reasonable work-logic cascades to help others make life-giving decisions.
It is a crime to knowingly conceal existential good news that can deliver others from death by default if shared. The Jonah License acknowledges this reality. The public safety case for using it is described remarkably well in Chapter 3 of the biblical book of Jonah: Jonah 3 (BSB).
The 2-page handout
The four core terms below also exist as a printable 2-page flyer: download the PDF (also shown in full under Flyer at the bottom of this page). It is catalogued as an exhibit in the Good News Pack; this page is its canonical home, so there is one copy to keep current.
The MockupModel version 1 of the Jonah License is this:
Jonah License \JoLi MMv1: "This content is
1. Free under CC0 (https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/cc0/).
2. Copy, adapt, sing ... it to gentle kind reasonably avert Armageddon.
3. Prepare to explain on Judgement Day what you failed to do with it.
4. Version and date your changes if you can." (JoLi MMv1_2024m10d18)
Purpose#
The Jonah License is designed for existential emergencies where grave threats andOr disasters will cause great loss of life if incurious ignorant indifference continues to cause inaction in matters vital for survival. Like placing content deliberately into the public domain under a Creative Commons CC0 License, the JoLi minimizes legal constraints. Assuming freedom of speech, it seeks to best enable all to pass on, improve, translate, adapt, … any content under the JoLi to best avert disasters in the most gentle kind reasonably way. Thereby, it encourages every Agent Responding Kindly to use the divinely-given, natural supercomputer between their ears. It can help grow gentle kind reasonable work-logic cascades that efficiently self-organize essential information infrastructure. Therefore, meaningful Access to Reasonable Knowledge can be enabled by gentle kind reasonable Acts of Random Kindness that avert impending disasters by sharing insights under the JoLi.
The JoLi differs from a CC0 public domain license in encouraging (not enforcing!) some best practices (like versioning to reduce data chaos). It also reminds that death caused by distant incurious ignorant indifference still counts as death caused by lethal inaction at a time when a lethal disaster was still avertable.
Hence, the JoLi recommends choosing now to not waste opportunities for gentle kind reasonably organizing data to avert Datageddon data disasters that trigger real-world Armageddon disasters that can be averted by intelligent actions that guard all life. Actions and inactions that cause a death both must explain that death on Judgement Day. Why not simplify eternity by overcoming deadly incurious ignorant indifference with gentle kind reasonable data-sharing?
On the charge of “moral blackmail”
Some readers may object that the JoLi’s language — “crime,” “Judgement Day” — constitutes moral blackmail: pressuring people to share content through guilt rather than persuasion.
The objection deserves a serious answer. Consider the parallel: when someone says “I don’t vote; I’m apolitical,” they may not realize that abstaining is itself a systemic vote — one that reliably favors whoever benefits from low turnout. Non-participation is not neutral. It is a choice with consequences.
The same structure applies here. If content exists that could help avert an existential disaster, then the choice is not between “sharing” and “doing nothing.” It is between sharing and not sharing while the disaster approaches. The JoLi does not claim to know which content qualifies — that judgment belongs to each person. But it insists that the choice to share or not share is a real choice with real consequences, not a neutral non-event.
LLoL cannot influence how people decide. But he can try, as best he can, to persuade others to consider whether silence about a grave threat is genuinely the path they would choose if they understood the stakes. The JoLi’s language is strong because the stakes are strong. If that feels like pressure, it may be worth asking: is the discomfort coming from the language, or from the possibility that it might be right?
Flyer#
The printable 2-page introduction to JoLi MMv1 — download the PDF.
