ADR-0002: Code licence

Status: ACCEPTED Date: 2026-10-10 Deciders: Yathindra (chose MIT in the Phase 1 question round); Claude Code (proposed) Phase: 1

Context

DriftWatch will be public by Phase 12, with a PyPI package and a Zenodo DOI. The datasets it uses are licensed MIT (LAMDA), BSD-2-Clause (BODMAS) and Apache-2.0 (EMBER2024, optional) [verified in build guide §1]. The repository redistributes no dataset content except a synthetic fixture. Free tools only.

Options considered

Option A: MIT

Short, permissive and widely understood; the same licence as LAMDA. No explicit patent grant.

Option B: Apache-2.0

Permissive, with an explicit patent grant and patent-retaliation clause. Requires a NOTICE file and statements of changes from redistributors, which means slightly more upkeep.

Decision (choice)

MIT. The project is a research artifact with no patentable machinery. It favours the simplest terms for reuse in coursework and research, and it matches the primary Android dataset’s licence.

Consequences

  • LICENSE holds the MIT text, “Copyright (c) 2026 Yathindra K B”. pyproject.toml declares license = "MIT" and CITATION.cff declares license: MIT.

  • No patent grant is given. Acceptable for this project.

  • Dataset licences are separate from the code licence; docs/ETHICS.md and the Phase 12 licence audit cover them.