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0013. License

Status: proposed (Phase 2, 2026-11-10) ยท Requirements: NFR-18

Context

trimset is open source, self-hosted, and meant to be adopted inside companies. Its neighbours (Ollaya, the decision-model SDKs) are mostly Apache-2.0.

Options

  1. MIT. Permissive, but it grants no patents.
  2. Apache-2.0. Permissive, with a patent grant, and familiar to company legal teams.
  3. AGPL-3.0. Protects against a hosted fork, but many companies won't adopt it.
  4. Source-available (BSL, Elastic License). Not open source, which conflicts with the project's aim.

Decision

Apache-2.0 for everything in the repository: code, docs and the site. - Contributions come in under the same licence, with a Developer Certificate of Origin sign-off (git commit -s) instead of a contributor licence agreement. - CI fails if a shipped dependency carries a licence that conflicts with Apache-2.0, such as GPL or AGPL (NFR-18).

Consequences

  • Anyone may offer trimset as a hosted service. That is accepted. Hosted SaaS is a non-goal for this project, not something to defend.
  • Phase 7 adds LICENSE, NOTICE and the DCO check.