0013. License

• Status: Accepted
• Accepted: 2026-11-09
• Date: 2026-11-03

Context

Neolith is an open-source library that adopters embed in commercial Django codebases. Changing the license after outside contributions arrive needs every contributor’s agreement, so this is close to a one-way door.

Options

1. BSD-3-Clause. Django’s own license, and common across the Django ecosystem. Permissive, with no explicit patent grant.
2. MIT. The most common permissive license, and short. No explicit patent grant.
3. Apache-2.0. Permissive, with an explicit patent grant and patent-retaliation clause. Longer, and requires a NOTICE file.
4. Copyleft (GPL or AGPL). Protects the commons, but deters exactly the commercial teams neolith is for.

Decision

BSD-3-Clause. It matches Django and gives adopters’ legal reviews the least friction. Apache-2.0 was the alternative if an explicit patent grant mattered more; it did not outweigh ecosystem consistency. Accepted by the maintainer on 2026-11-09.

Consequences

• Permissive licensing maximises adoption, but allows proprietary forks.
• LICENSE holds the BSD-3-Clause text. pyproject.toml declares license = "BSD-3-Clause" once it exists.
• No per-file license headers; the repository-level LICENSE is sufficient, as in Django itself.