[465 follow-up] Public distribution readiness: licence decisions, release key, publish decision #547

Parent: #465 · Split out by #546

Objective

Track the blockers between the native runtime's engineering result (ENGINEERING_COMPLETE, see docs/reference/native_runtime_closeout.md) and PUBLIC_DISTRIBUTION_READY. Engineering work on the package is done; this issue is about licence decisions, the release key, and the owner's decision to publish. Until it closes, distribution stays local-only and no package is published.

Definitions: closeout doc §1. Do not infer redistribution permission from equal licence-file hashes or from engineering evidence.

Blockers

Licences (PR-C4 Open items, shipping/THIRD_PARTY.md; closeout §6.1)

• L-1 libnvJitLink.so.13, libcufile.so.0, libnvshmem_host.so.3: the shipped wheel text does not name them; the version-matched official terms (CUDA 13.0 U2 EULA Attachment A; NVSHMEM 3.4.5 SLA) do. Which text governs objects obtained as wheels? If the official terms, should their text ship in licenses/?
• L-2 cuDNN (5 objects) and libnvinfer.so.10: the bundled and official texts differ. Which governs? How are TensorRT's one-year term and "equivalent downstream restrictions" met?
• L-3 libgomp.so.1 (GPL-3.0-or-later WITH GCC-exception-3.1): no licence text ships. Add the GPL-3.0 and exception texts and decide how source is offered, or handle it another way.
• L-4 NVIDIA's common conditions ("material additional functionality", "only accessed by your application", not subjecting the SDK to an open-source licence): are they met?
• Record the owner's conclusions in shipping/license_audit.json (owner_confirmation, distribution.status) and re-render THIRD_PARTY.md.

Signing (closeout §6.2)

• The owner generates the release minisign key and commits only shipping/package/minisign.pub in a separate PR (key management: resolved config doc §20.1).
• Public releases must be signed. The optional signature ([465 Closeout] Native runtime acceptance and optional signing policy #546, §21) applies only to local-only packages.

Model root (M-1; added by the #552 audit)

• M-1 share/saccade/models/: the YOLO26s backbone engine has Ultralytics AGPL-3.0 lineage (ADR 023; upstream position), the Mamba head was trained with ultralytics' loss and teacher, and the training-data terms (MOT17 and others) were not checked. Owner options: a commercial licence, a legal opinion, or a different backbone. [Architecture umbrella] Separate model artifacts from Saccade runtime and release lifecycle #549 tracks the model/runtime separation, which does not settle any licence question. Open item M-1 in shipping/license_audit.json.

Decision

• Owner decides to publish, and where.

Stage 0A checkpoint — evidence / owner actions (2026-10-09)

Source: main 83c9bef0029ab4b969a39f52ab592c47f74d34f6; #552 and #554 merged. The checklist above remains OPEN for the unresolved decisions; its pre-#552 wording does not mean the supplied texts are still missing. This checkpoint permits the #550 work line to move to #509; it does not close this issue or grant distribution rights.

The facts, textual readings and legal uncertainties are recorded separately in open_items, resolved config §22 and the tracked run/replay evidence. Decision owner for every row: #547 release owner (repository owner); legal/vendor confirmation is to be obtained by that owner.

Current-main recheck: render consistency PASS; full licence audit 7/7 PASS against retained replay tree, 2026-10-08 official snapshots and the pinned RPM/SRPM; formal 50 and replay 4 retained artifact hashes match the tracked record; 64-file replay/formal tree hash lists match. --mode attested exits 0 with its documented non-recomputed environment/input/probe limits. These are local evidence checks, not independent public-release qualification or a new legal opinion.

Remaining release gates: L-1–L-4 and M-1 OPEN, distribution.status = local-only, owner_confirmation = null; release owner still supplies the minisign public key and decides the publication channel and whether to publish. Cross-issue priority and checkpoint status remain solely in #550.

Non-goals

New GPU/SM, TensorRT or platform support; runtime changes; new benchmarks; assumption-based licence clearance.