ADR 0002 — Licensing: MIT for the framework, GPL for the editor
- Status: Accepted
- Date: 2026-08-09
- Context repos: all
Problem
Cratly spans repositories with different roles, and they do not carry the same licence: the editor is GPL-3.0-only, everything else is MIT. Nothing recorded why. The split was noticed again while reconstructing how the pieces fit together, and the reasoning had to be derived from the architecture rather than read anywhere — which is how a deliberate choice decays into an accident nobody dares touch.
The house default at cepharum is MIT, so the editor is the deviation and is the part that needs justifying.
Decision
| Repository | Licence | Why |
|---|---|---|
scavold | MIT | Embedded into customer websites that are usually not open. Copyleft here would make the framework unusable for exactly its intended audience. |
site (specifications) | MIT | A specification under copyleft deters the third-party adapters the format exists for. Anyone must be able to implement .cratly.config.yaml and the section-type manifest without licence consequences. |
the site templates (templates/*) | MIT | Copied verbatim into customer repositories; it is a starting point, not a dependency. |
tools | MIT | Build infrastructure with no distributed artifacts beyond a CI image. |
editor | GPL-3.0-only | A finished application rather than a building block. Copyleft keeps a competitor from forking it, extending it and shipping the result closed. |
The dividing line is the same one the architecture already draws: what others build upon is permissive, what stands on its own as a product is copyleft.
Why GPL is sufficient here, without AGPL
The editor has no server component. It runs entirely in the browser and talks to GitLab directly over the API. Anyone operating a modified version therefore delivers the JavaScript bundle to their users, which is distribution in the sense of the licence, and the copyleft obligation applies.
Had the editor kept a backend, GPL would have been leaky — a modified server-side version could be operated without ever conveying the code — and AGPL would have been required. The serverless design closes that gap on its own, and AGPL would add nothing but friction.
Consequences
- cepharum holds the copyright on the editor and can therefore still license it commercially under different terms.
- Adapter authors and website owners are unaffected: they only ever depend on the MIT parts. The editor is used, not integrated.
- Contributions to the editor arrive under GPL, which is intended.
Open question
GPL-3.0-only excludes later versions of the licence; GPL-3.0-or-later would let users move to a future GPLv4. The only variant is the more restrictive of the two and was more likely a generator default than a decision. Worth settling deliberately.
Not covered here
This record states the engineering reasoning. Anything binding — the exact obligations for operators, or a commercial dual-licensing arrangement — belongs to legal counsel, not to this document.