ADR 0003: License is deliberately undecided

Status

Superseded by ADR 0033 — the license is now decided (Apache License 2.0).

Context

Spec section 9 calls for a deliberate choice between a permissive license (MIT/Apache-2.0) and a copyleft license (GPL/LGPL), based on the desired plugin ecosystem dynamics: permissive licensing lowers friction for third-party and commercial plugins/forks; copyleft (especially LGPL for the core, or GPL) can force derivative works and plugins to stay open, which matters more once the plugin ABI (Phase 5) exists.

This is explicitly called out as a decision to make deliberately, not by default — so no license has been chosen or assumed on the project's behalf.

Decision

No LICENSE file is added yet. Until this ADR is superseded with an actual choice:

• The repository must not be pushed to a public remote or otherwise distributed — with no LICENSE file, default copyright law applies and no one else has rights to use, modify, or redistribute the code.
• External contributions should not be accepted, since contributors would have nothing to license their contribution under.

Consequences

This decision is revisited before Phase 5 (plugin ABI) at the latest, since the license directly shapes what plugin authors are allowed to do. Revisit sooner if the repo is meant to go public earlier than that.