license-choice

name	license-choice
description	Use when the user asks to pick a license for a new Serokell project, add a LICENSE file, set up a proprietary repository, or handle copyright on customer / derived work. Triggers on phrases like "pick a license", "what license should we use", "add LICENSE file", "set up a proprietary repo", "MPL or GPL", "LicenseRef-Proprietary", "customer owns the copyright".

Choosing a license

This decision tree applies to Serokell-owned projects. If the project is paid for by a client, the client has the ultimate say on licensing terms (and usually owns the copyright).

Default: MPL-2.0

Use MPL-2.0 for most Serokell-owned libraries and projects. Any team member can start a small library under this license without further approval.

When to choose otherwise

• GPL-3.0-or-later — when the project has good commercial potential. GPL-licensed code is hard to embed in proprietary commercial products, so this license encourages potential commercial users to come back to us. Consult your manager before applying this.

• AGPL-3.0-or-later — when the project's main value comes from being run as a service (e.g. it is a server). AGPL is one of the few licenses that prevents someone from forking, modifying, and selling the service without sharing changes back. Consult your manager.

• Other licenses — possible if there is a good reason. Check with your manager before applying anything not in the list above.

Proprietary (closed-source) projects

When the source is not intended to be freely used by anyone:

1. Create LICENSES/LicenseRef-Proprietary.txt with:

   © <year> <holder name>, all rights reserved.
   

2. Use LicenseRef-Proprietary as the SPDX-License-Identifier in per-file SPDX headers.

(This is a temporary workaround until SPDX supports a NONE tag.)

Files in the repository

Whichever license you pick:

• Add the license text at LICENSES/<SPDX-ID>.txt. This repo's LICENSES/ directory holds commonly-used Serokell licence texts; copy from there or download via reuse download <SPDX-ID>.
• Also copy the primary license as LICENSE at the repo root — GitHub and GitLab treat this file specially.
• Add per-file SPDX headers (see the reuse-headers skill).

Copyright holder

• Customer-funded project: copyright belongs to the customer unless the contract says otherwise. Use their name in SPDX-FileCopyrightText.
• Internal Serokell project: copyright belongs to Serokell <https://serokell.io/>.

For customer projects, an authorised representative of the customer should confirm the chosen license — typically by approving the PR that adds the license file.

Derived work from third-party code

If a customer asks us to take existing third-party-owned code and produce a derived work:

• Any generic helper / utility functionality that can be cleanly separated should be put into its own repo with the customer as copyright holder (so it's not encumbered by the third-party's license).
• Code closely related to the original third-party code: copyright stays with the original owner; contact them to negotiate licensing terms.
• If the customer insists on doing something legally wrong (using third-party code under terms that don't allow it), refuse the work and communicate this clearly.

If a customer comes to us and tells us that they were hired by yet another party to do the work: we don't engage with that further upstream party. Per our standard contract, the immediate customer becomes the copyright holder of whatever we produce, unless they explicitly tell us otherwise.

See also

• reuse-headers skill — per-file SPDX header conventions.