> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://delivery.vexa.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# ADR-0008 — The whole repository is Apache-2.0

> Open license, private repo, access per person; customer material moves out.

**Status:** accepted (founder ruling 2026-08-24) · **Amends:** [ADR-0001](/adr/0001-repo-charter) §2
and [ADR-0005](/adr/0005-kit-license-split)

## Context

[ADR-0005](/adr/0005-kit-license-split) drew the license boundary at the customer edge: `kit/`
Apache-2.0 because a customer runs it, everything else proprietary because we never distribute it.
That reasoning was sound and its conclusion has aged badly, for two reasons that only became
visible once a real subscriber's engineer was about to be given a clone.

**The boundary protects something we do not distribute.** ADR-0005 itself established that the
product is not the software — it is the attested release stream, the evidence, the support lane and
the co-design hours. Applied to the factory, the same argument runs the same way. The factory is
configuration and glue around standard components — Argo CD, Kyverno, cosign; the subscription's
value lies in the operated channel and its evidence, not in this code.

**The boundary costs us the contributor we want.** The kit was made Apache-2.0 precisely so
operators could shape it — ADR-0005's last consequence anticipates contributions back. But the
person who shapes the kit is the customer's platform engineer, and a repository whose root license
forbids copying is friction at exactly the moment we are asking that engineer to clone, read and
send a patch. The split had to be explained before the first commit could be made.

## The ruling

Founder, 2026-08-24, verbatim:

> let's go for apache 2 in private repo that we share access

## Decision

1. **The whole repository is licensed Apache-2.0**, copyright Vexa Inc. 2026. The root
   [`LICENSE`](https://github.com/Vexa-ai/vexa-delivery/blob/main/LICENSE) carries the Apache-2.0 text and the root [`NOTICE`](https://github.com/Vexa-ai/vexa-delivery/blob/main/NOTICE)
   states the scope. The Vexa Enterprise license text is removed.
2. **`kit/LICENSE` and `kit/NOTICE` stay** — not as a boundary marker but as a shipping
   requirement: `kit/release.sh` packages `kit/` into a standalone signed tarball, so the license
   has to travel with those bytes. Their text no longer describes a split.
3. **The repository stays private, and access is granted per person.** The first grant is the
   subscriber's platform engineer, so that they can clone and contribute. Public visibility is a
   separate decision and is not taken here.
4. **Customer-identifying material does not live in this repository.** Per-customer onboarding
   packs and station profiles move out and are gitignored, mirroring the rule `stations/` already
   enforces. What remains is a template.

Points 3 and 4 are the load-bearing pair. Point 3 is what makes 4 necessary.

## Consequences

* **This is irreversible for every version released under it.** Apache-2.0 is a perpetual,
  irrevocable grant. We may license *future* commits differently; we cannot claw back what any
  person with access has already received. There is no undo, and nobody should expect one.
* **A competitor may lift the factory.** Anyone we grant access to may copy, modify and
  redistribute all of it, including publicly, and owes us nothing but attribution and a NOTICE
  file. We accept this deliberately.
* **Confidentiality is not governed by a license, and this is the trap.** An open license plus a
  private repository reads as safe and is not: the moment we grant a person access, they lawfully
  hold everything in the tree, and Apache-2.0 places no confidentiality obligation on them at all.
  Whatever protects a customer's estate details must be a contract (an NDA, a pilot letter) or
  their absence from the repository. Decision 4 chooses absence, because it is the only one of the
  two that this repository can enforce.
* **Access grants are now the whole control surface.** Every grant is a decision with no technical
  undo — a revoked collaborator keeps their clone. Grants are founder-gated.
* **History is not rewritten.** The customer material removed by this change remains in the git
  history of this repository, and a collaborator with a clone can read it. The removal protects
  what is committed from here on; it does not retroactively unpublish. Rewriting history across a
  repo with open pull requests was judged out of scope, and stating the residual exposure plainly
  was judged better than a rewrite that would look like a guarantee.
* **Public vs private visibility remains open.** Nothing here argues for or against publishing the
  repository. That is a later founder decision, and it is a much larger one, because visibility —
  unlike a license — is what actually determines who reads the tree.
* **Contribution back becomes ordinary.** A subscriber's engineer clones, patches, and sends a pull
  request against a single well-known license with no boundary to explain first. The scoped first
  contribution offered to the pilot's engineer (the operator-side smoke) needs no special handling.
* **The public positioning stays true**, as it did under ADR-0005: no feature is gated, no source
  is held back, and what is sold is a stream and a service. The claim is now simply stronger.