From cce8a911553597ada33e275bc9b29fd34121074d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Christophe Besson Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2026 08:59:06 +0200 Subject: chore: license MeshBay — LGPL protocol layer, AGPL for the rest MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit The protocol layer is LGPL-3.0-or-later in every language it exists in, so any client may use it whatever its own licence: meshbay-common, and the files marked with an SPDX line — keyderive.js, crypto.js, playlist-crypto.js, transport*.js; keyring.js, transcripts.js and argon2-wasm.js on the desktop; Kdf.kt, Keyring.kt and Transcripts.kt on Android. Everything else is AGPL-3.0-or-later, which the RPM specs and package.json already declared without a licence file to back them. Two AGPL section 7 permissions: - group applications may be under any licence when they use the interface only through a named surface (static/licenses/APPLICATION-EXCEPTION.txt); the reference application is 0BSD so that copying it brings no AGPL code; - the Android application may be conveyed linked with Google Play services. Third-party code is accounted for: THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt is generated from what a build ships (packaging/third_party_notices.py) for the deb/rpm venv and the frozen Windows node — PyAV's wheel grafts in libx264 and libx265, which its BSD licence does not mention — and the vendored browser libraries get their licence texts and htm-preact.js its provenance. Wheels carry SPDX metadata, RPMs %license, debs a DEP-5 copyright file, every Windows target LICENSE.txt. test_licensing.py holds the line: the LGPL layer imports nothing under the AGPL, the reference application nothing outside the application interface, and every SPDX line is one of the known ones. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 --- docs/MESHBAY_DESIGN.md | 10 ++++++++++ 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+) (limited to 'docs') diff --git a/docs/MESHBAY_DESIGN.md b/docs/MESHBAY_DESIGN.md index 5d33f5f..d051d87 100644 --- a/docs/MESHBAY_DESIGN.md +++ b/docs/MESHBAY_DESIGN.md @@ -2880,6 +2880,16 @@ There is no folder-browsing protocol and this does not add one. application with no toolbar renders none — an empty band still holds a strip of the page open. +9. **Licence.** An application may be under any licence, provided it reaches the + interface only through the *application interface*: the props of §9.2, the + registry fields above, the exports of `i18n.js`, `icon.js`, `file-utils.js`, + `settings-ui.js` and `folder-tree.js`, `style.css`'s classes and the + catalogues' keys (`static/licenses/APPLICATION-EXCEPTION.txt`, an AGPL §7 + permission). Importing any other module of the interface makes the + application a work based on it, under the AGPL. Its registry line and its + catalogue entries are changes to the interface and stay AGPL. Starting from + `helloworld-app.js`, which is 0BSD, brings no AGPL code along. + No protocol change, no hub change, no daemon change. Steps 4 and 7 are the only node-side and test-side touches, and both are allow-lists. -- cgit v1.2.3