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License & notice¶

It looks like you're checking whether you can use me. Mostly yes, with one important note about names.

Notice¶

Notices¶

Clippy Pet is an unofficial open-source project by Adam Matthew Steinberger.

The project intentionally evokes the visual language of Microsoft's historical Clippy/Clippit Office Assistant. Microsoft, Office, Clippy, and Clippit may be trademarks or protected properties of Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft has not endorsed, sponsored, or affiliated itself with this project.

The MIT License covers the original project files and contributions to the extent the copyright holder is legally able to license them. It does not grant trademark rights, rights to third-party names or characters, or rights the project author does not own. Users and redistributors are responsible for evaluating their intended use.

Clippy Pet is likewise not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by OpenAI; it implements OpenAI's publicly documented pet file format for the ChatGPT desktop app and Codex CLI as a third party.

License¶

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2026 Adam Matthew Steinberger

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.

What that means in practice¶

  • You can install it, redistribute it, remix the frames, package it for your distro, and use the GIFs in your README, all under MIT.
  • You should keep the notice with any redistribution and not present a fork as official or endorsed.
  • You can't get from MIT any right to the names "Clippy", "Clippit", "Microsoft", or "Office", or to third-party characters. Evaluate your own use, especially commercial use.
  • Contributors certify they have the right to license every pixel and line they submit under MIT (see Contributing).

Attribution: see AUTHORS.md and the contributor graph.