chore(license): adopt the fleet license posture, one declaration rendered per repo - #12
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August 17, 2026 13:15
License across the fleet was a per-repo accident: five regimes with no visible logic, plus six repos carrying no LICENSE at all -- which means all rights reserved by default, the most restrictive possible outcome, reached without anyone deciding it. Posture is now declared once and rendered, rather than written per repo. Four postures: `fleet` (PolyForm Noncommercial -- read freely, use noncommercially, commercial use asks), `product` (PolyForm Shield, for business surface), `interop` (Apache-2.0 OR MIT, for libraries other repos depend on), and `private` (an explicit proprietary notice). The licensor is `Ardent Works LLC` everywhere. Previous notices named the GitHub org handle `forkwright`, which is not a legal entity and can neither hold copyright nor enforce a noncompete, or -- in one repo -- an individual. The correction that drove the choice: AGPL does not restrict commercial use. It permits it explicitly and requires share-alike instead, so the eight AGPL repos were providing neither property they were chosen for. The manifest `license` field moves in the same commit as the license text deliberately. A repo whose Cargo.toml claims one license while its LICENSE states another is internally contradictory, and that is worse than either original state -- a scanner reports the stricter of the two and a reader cannot tell which governs. Repos carrying an inherited copyleft obligation are deliberately NOT changed here: aletheia, akroasis and thumos keep their current licenses until the derived upstream code is rewritten greenfield. An inherited obligation is not ours to override, and relicensing derived code would be a violation performed as tidying.
`MANIFEST/license-spdx-match` reads the `spdx:` declaration here, and for a repo with no Cargo.toml -- pinax is one, it is not a Rust project -- this is the ONLY place the SPDX is declared. Updating manifests alone left those repos asserting one license in CI config while shipping another in LICENSE, which is the internal contradiction this change exists to remove.
`kanon gate --stamp` amends HEAD and refuses when HEAD is already the pushed upstream tip, since amending there would rewrite a commit origin has. This commit exists solely to give the trailer somewhere to land. It is honest because the trailer binds to the TREE, and an empty commit does not change the tree — the attestation still covers exactly the content that was gated. WHY not a merge of main instead, which is the usual way to get a fresh commit: merging main puts main's own `.github/workflows/*` into the gate's changed-file set, which selects the `repo-lint` step and fails it on two pre-existing `SHELL/unpinned-action` findings in files this branch does not touch. That is main's CI-pinning debt, not this change's, and pinning a reusable workflow to a SHA is a fleet-wide policy call rather than a side fix in a licence PR. Filed separately. Gate-Passed: kanon 0.12.0 +stages:fmt,check,clippy,nextest,lint sha:7f863166bc51a918f408b555a59e0a7ccf5ca8ae
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Finding
fleet/license-postures.tomldeclares this repofleet, which renders PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0.It ships PolyForm Shield 1.0.0, and its
Required Noticenamesforkwright (https://github.com/forkwright).forkwrightis a GitHub organisation handle. It is not a legal entity, it cannot hold copyright, anda noncommercial or noncompete restriction is enforceable only by a legal person who does — so in the
one place where using the handle as an identity has legal effect, it is used as one. Thirteen fleet
repos already carry
Ardent Works LLC (https://ardent.tools)on exactly that reasoning.What changes
Two artifacts, because splitting them leaves the repo internally contradictory — a scanner reports
the stricter of a config/
LICENSEdisagreement and a reader cannot tell which is authoritative.LICENSE— the full canonical PolyForm Noncommercial text, rendered from the declaration ratherthan written here. sha256
60cd10e4f7e2e2f98514f157b34e0ebf62d4a7828324b255656e1fb093dcdb0a, whichis the hash
MANIFEST/license-spdx-matchpins for this posture, so a byte of drift fails the rulerather than passing quietly.
.kanon-ci.toml'sspdx:declaration, whichMANIFEST/license-spdx-matchreads. Updating thelicence text alone would leave the repo asserting one licence in CI config and shipping another.
This is a change of axis, not a tightening. Shield permits commercial use and forbids competing
use; Noncommercial forbids commercial use and places no restriction on what the user builds. Neither
contains the other. For a library whose consumers are repos the same licensor owns,
fleetis thedeclared intent — and that decision lives in the posture file, not in this PR.
Verification
apply-license-posture.py --check --repo mneme --into <this worktree>reports 0 artifact groupsdiffer: the branch satisfies the declaration exactly, checked with the current renderer rather than
the one that produced it. The rendered
LICENSEhashes to the pinned value above.The trailer's
sha:is the tip's tree exactly. The third commit is an empty one whose only purpose isto give that trailer somewhere to land —
--stampamends HEAD and refuses when HEAD is the pushedupstream tip. It is honest because the trailer binds to the tree, and an empty commit does not
change the tree, so the attestation covers exactly the content that was gated. Its own message records
why a merge of main was rejected as the alternative: merging pulls main's workflows into the changed
file set and fails
repo-linton two pre-existingSHELL/unpinned-actionfindings this branch doesnot touch.
mneme is public, so its CI is unaffected by the billing stop on the eight private repos.
Scope
Three fleet repos still carry the handle notice after this:
kanon(PR #3545, open),logismos(PR #113, open), andthumos. thumos is the one that matters most — it is public, so its unenforceable notice isalready relied upon by third parties — and it was invisible to the drift check until
kanon#3588was fixed, because a crate-scoped copyleft hold was suppressing the whole repository'slicence comparison.
Refs forkwright/kanon#3588.