ADR-0002. Use CC BY-SA 4.0 License for Documentation¶
Date: 2025-11-25
Status¶
Accepted
Context¶
The SciLifeLab Architecture Board documentation will be developed collaboratively across multiple institutions. Without explicit licensing, ownership and reuse rights are unclear.
We need a license that:
- Provides multi-institutional legal clarity
- Ensures governance improvements remain open
- Prevents proprietary capture of community standards
- Enables academic citation
Decision¶
We will use the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license for this repository.
Consequences¶
Positive¶
- Share-alike provision: Any derivative works must be distributed under the same or compatible license, ensuring the documentation remains open
- Attribution requirement: Users must give appropriate credit, which helps maintain visibility of SciLifeLab's contributions
- Wide adoption: CC BY-SA 4.0 is widely recognized and understood in the open-source community (used by Wikipedia and many documentation projects)
- Flexibility: Others can freely use, adapt, and build upon our architectural decisions while keeping them accessible
- Non-software focus: CC licenses are specifically designed for creative works and documentation, making them more appropriate than software licenses (MIT, GPL, etc.)
Negative¶
- Not suitable for code: Any code examples should be licensed separately under a software license
- Compatibility considerations: Share-alike requirement may limit how others can combine our documentation with other licensed content
-
No warranty disclaimer: Users should be aware that architectural decisions are provided "as-is" without guarantees of suitability
-
The license file (LICENSE) has been added to the repository root
- A license badge and information have been added to the README
- Future code repositories may need different licenses (e.g., MIT, Apache 2.0) appropriate for software