irrevon
Record
ADR-0028
Status
accepted (owner ratification by direct written instruction, 2026-07-21)
Date
2026-07-21
Supersedes
— (resolves the license-choice question ADR-0014 held open; ADR-0014's contributor-governance half remains open)

Outbound license — Apache-2.0 for the whole repository (resolves the license half of ADR-0014)

Context

ADR-0014 held the outbound-license decision open with two candidates: A (neutrality-first — Apache-2.0 for everything) and B (protection-first — AGPL-3.0 engine + Apache-2.0 harness/schemas/SDK). The master doc assumed Apache-2.0 (§10, §15/M2; AM-19 marked that assumption subordinate to ADR-0014). On 2026-07-21 the owner ratified Candidate A — Apache-2.0 by direct written instruction, understanding explicitly that the repository is public, so adding the license open-sources it immediately [DD]. This is the human decision review-queue items 7/18 were waiting on; per the review-queue policy, the queue rows themselves are annotated only by appended records (item 30) — resolution marks are human acts.

Decision

The repository is licensed Apache-2.0 as a whole: the verbatim license text ships as the root LICENSE, with a root NOTICE carrying the attribution line “Irrevon — Copyright 2026 Irrevon contributors” (a named public notice, per ADR-0014’s consequence 4 that “the repository owner” is not a valid public copyright notice; the neutral collective name avoids personal identifiers by the standing sanitization mandate). LICENSING.md becomes the short posture notice for the new state. Deliberately not included (each remains a human step on ADR-0014’s consequences ladder): CONTRIBUTING.md / DCO / CLA (contributions stay closed — the contributor-governance half of ADR-0014 is still open), TRADEMARKS.md and the USPTO filing (ride the counsel name screen), the CC-BY-4.0 dataset question (no standalone dataset artifacts exist yet), US copyright registration, counsel review of the adopted text, and packaging license metadata (SPDX expression + classifier land with the ADR-0018 M8 release mechanics).

Alternatives

  • Candidate B (AGPL engine + Apache harness hybrid) — ADR-0014’s protection-first option; not chosen by the owner. It also carried the recorded structural cost (review-queue §3 item 24): the ADR-0018 single wheel violates B’s arm’s-length invariant, forcing a package split or module firewall. A has no such cost.
  • MIT — equal adoption ceiling but no patent grant; Apache-2.0 §3 matters for an engine adjudicating irreversible actions.
  • Source-available (BSL/FSL/ELv2) — delivers fork-prohibition at fatal cost to benchmark neutrality and the open-source claim (ADR-0014 analysis); never a candidate at this gate.
  • Stay unlicensed until the public-release gate — ADR-0014’s interim; ended by the owner’s ratification (an unlicensed public repo destroys adoption and has no inbound basis — one-way door 3).

Consequences

  • The published repository is open-source effective immediately; the grant on published versions is irrevocable (ADR-0014 one-way door 1 — knowingly taken by the owner).
  • Attribution survives every fork via Apache-2.0 §4(c)–(d) NOTICE reproduction — the imprint mechanism ADR-0014 identified as fully achievable.
  • Contributions remain closed. Inbound governance (DCO enforcement, engine contribution policy) must land before the first outside PR (ADR-0014 one-way door 2).
  • psycopg (LGPL-3.0-only) remains the single non-permissive runtime dependency; the recorded analysis (review-queue §2) finds it compatible with Apache-2.0 in the standard separately-installed-library way; the documented-exception ruling is still owed (rides review-queue items 7/18’s residue).
  • The master doc’s §10/§15 Apache-2.0 assumption is now confirmed rather than subordinate; AM-19’s text integration proceeds in that direction (queue item 30).
  • Conformance: make check link/integrity gates cover the new files; the site’s licensing prose and claims registry are updated in the same change.

Risks

If a deep-pocketed party ever hosts a commercial Irrevon, Apache-2.0 offers no recourse — accepted knowingly (ADR-0014’s Candidate-A risk, unchanged). Counsel has not yet reviewed the adoption; ADR-0014’s “not legal advice” banner applies to this record too, and the counsel-review consequence stays on the human ladder.

Reopen trigger

Counsel review contradicts the adoption’s mechanics (text, NOTICE form, or the psycopg exception); the SFC v. Vizio verdict or an equivalent shift makes the license landscape materially different before first packaged release; or the owner orders a change for future versions (published versions stay Apache-2.0 forever — relicensing honesty per ADR-0014).