3.3 KiB
ADR-002: Use the MIT License
- Status: Accepted
- Date: 2026-07-29
Context
The project is intended to be an open educational and engineering reference for designing OTA update systems on embedded Linux.
The repository may contain:
- documentation;
- diagrams;
- source code;
- scripts;
- configuration examples;
- reference implementations;
- test utilities;
- failure-injection experiments.
The license should allow engineers to study, modify, reuse, and adapt the material in both personal and commercial projects.
The license should also be familiar, permissive, and easy to understand. The project does not require derivative works to remain open source.
Decision
The repository will be licensed under the MIT License.
The license will apply to the repository content unless a specific file or third-party component explicitly states otherwise.
A standard LICENSE file containing the MIT License text will be included at the repository root.
Alternatives Considered
Apache License 2.0
Apache 2.0 is a permissive license that includes an explicit patent grant and patent retaliation provisions.
It was not selected because the project is currently an educational reference design rather than a large infrastructure framework or commercially governed software platform.
The additional legal complexity does not currently provide enough practical benefit over MIT.
GNU General Public License
The GPL would require derivative works distributed under certain conditions to remain under the same license.
It was not selected because the project is intended to encourage broad reuse, including adoption of ideas and code in commercial embedded products.
A copyleft requirement could discourage some companies or engineers from using the examples.
BSD 2-Clause or BSD 3-Clause License
The BSD licenses are permissive and would also be suitable for the project.
They were not selected because MIT is more familiar to many readers, concise, and already consistent with other projects maintained by the author.
No Explicit License
Without a license, the repository would remain protected by copyright by default and other people would not have clear legal permission to reuse the material.
This would conflict with the educational and open-source goals of the project.
Consequences
Positive
- The project can be used in open-source and commercial environments.
- Engineers can copy, modify, and redistribute examples.
- The license is short and widely understood.
- The project remains easy to adopt.
- The license is consistent with the author’s other open-source repositories.
- Attribution and preservation of the license notice are still required.
Negative
- Modified versions are not required to remain open source.
- Improvements may be used commercially without being contributed back.
- The license does not include the explicit patent language provided by Apache 2.0.
- The software is provided without warranty or liability protection beyond the license terms.
Notes
The repository is a reference design and educational project.
The MIT License permits reuse but does not imply that the implementation is production-ready, certified, secure for every deployment, or suitable for safety-critical systems.
These limitations should also be explained in the repository README.