ADR 0005: AGPL-3.0 for services and apps, Apache-2.0 for libraries

Status

Accepted (2026-10-08). Amended by ADR 0011 (GPL-3.0 for the PyMammotion adapter package).

Context

MowDeck is meant to be open and self-hostable. The services form a network service, and we want modifications that are offered as a hosted service to stay open. At the same time, parts such as the mower control library should be reusable by anyone, including closed-source projects.

Decision

License services, apps, tooling and infrastructure under AGPL-3.0. License the reusable libraries under libs/ under Apache-2.0; each library ships its own LICENSE. The full texts live in LICENSES/, the root LICENSE is the AGPL-3.0, and LICENSING.md explains the split.

Consequences

• Hosted forks must publish their changes.
• Libraries can be adopted widely without copyleft friction.
• Contributions to a library must not copy code from AGPL parts of the repository.
• Third-party components keep their own licenses.
• Review again before any commercial distribution.

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Mirrored from docs/adr/0005-licensing.md at commit 6a87264c6123f07c8474e153053525dc1816feb7. Edit the file in the repository, not this wiki page.