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archy/docs/LICENSE-COMPLIANCE-AUDIT.md

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License Compliance Audit — Open-Source Release

Audit date: 2026-07-22. Scope: entire repo (core Rust workspace, neode-ui, apps/*, Android companion, image-recipe ISO, docker/, app-catalog, reticulum-daemon, demo/) plus the external FIPS source and registry-mirrored images.

Verdict: the dependency graph is almost entirely permissive (MIT/Apache/BSD) and compatible with a free open-source release. But the repo is not releasable as-is: it has no license of its own, one LGPL Rust dependency, several non-redistributable committed assets (proprietary fonts, unknown-rights media), and missing attribution machinery. Everything below is ordered by severity.

STATUS UPDATE — 2026-07-23

DONE:

  • MIT adopted. Root LICENSE + NOTICE added; license = "MIT" in all 5 workspace crates (archy-fips-core already had it); "license": "MIT" (+ "private": true) in all 4 package.json files.
  • Deleted: Courier_New/, Benton_Sans/, Redacted/ fonts; wireguard.apk; atob.s9pk; obsolete test-install.sh (all git-rm'd; also removed from web/dist).
  • Media provenance resolved: all demo music/photos/posters, UI sfx, backgrounds, and intro video are the author's original work — recorded in demo/content/README.md and NOTICE.
  • Meshtastic device artwork attributed (mesh-devices/ATTRIBUTION.md + NOTICE); icon attribution added (assets/icon/ATTRIBUTION.md: game-icons.net CC BY 3.0, pixelarticons MIT).
  • Reticulum decision: include + disclose (NOTICE states the Reticulum License restrictions and that it applies only to the optional daemon).
  • indeedhub: deferred — partnership in place; license the submodule before/at public release.
  • License inventories generated: core/THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES.md (649 crates) and neode-ui/THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES.md (runtime deps + fonts + vendored).

REMAINING (code changes, awaiting review — see sections below for detail):

  1. Replace zbase32 (LGPL-3.0+) with z32 or original impl — §2.
  2. Swap redis:7.4.8 → Valkey in scripts/image-versions.sh and deploys — §3.
  3. Delete dead StartOS-derived crates core/{js-engine,container-init,models,helpers} — §4.
  4. Attribution build integration: cargo-about in CI → ship full license texts in ISO; vite/rollup license plugin (or UI licenses page) for the web bundle; Android OSS-licenses screen — §5.
  5. Release-checklist items: per-release Debian source pointer (snapshot.debian.org), catalog license/sourceUrl fields, restrict ISO image bundling to the audited list — §6.
  6. Before repo goes public: purge deleted fonts/APKs from git history (git filter-repo), and verify game-icons author credit.

1. BLOCKER — the project has no license

There is no LICENSE/COPYING file anywhere in the repo. No crate in core/ declares a license field; none of the four package.json files do either (and the three apps/* packages aren't even private: true). Until fixed, the code is "all rights reserved" — publicly visible, but legally not open source and not usable by anyone.

Do:

  • Choose a license. Recommendation: MIT — the Bitcoin-ecosystem norm (Bitcoin Core, LND are MIT), maximally compatible with everything found in the graph. (Alternatives: Apache-2.0 adds a patent grant; GPLv3 if copyleft is desired — nothing in the deps prevents any of these.)
  • Add LICENSE at repo root with the year and copyright holder.
  • Add license = "MIT" to all five workspace member Cargo.tomls (archipelago, container, openwrt, performance, security) and Android/rust/archy-fips-core (declares MIT but ships no license file — add one).
  • Add "license": "MIT" to neode-ui/package.json and apps/{morphos-server,router,did-wallet}/package.json.

2. BLOCKER — copyleft dependency that must be replaced

  • zbase32 0.1.2 — LGPL-3.0+ — the only hard copyleft blocker in all 649 resolved Rust crates. Direct dep of archipelago, used in core/archipelago/src/network/did_dht.rs for did:dht z-base-32 encoding. LGPL statically linked into a Rust binary requires shipping relinkable objects/source — impractical. Replace with the MIT z32 crate or a ~30-line original alphabet-substitution implementation.

No GPL, AGPL, SSPL, or unlicensed crates exist anywhere else in the Rust graph. (r-efi and self_cell list LGPL/GPL only as options in OR-expressions — elect MIT/Apache, no action.)

3. BLOCKER — committed files we may not redistribute

Remove from git (and purge from history before the repo goes public — they're in past commits):

  • neode-ui/public/assets/fonts/Courier_New/ — Monotype proprietary font, no license, unused in CSS. Delete.
  • neode-ui/public/assets/fonts/Benton_Sans/BentonSans-Regular.otf — commercial Font Bureau typeface, no license, unused. Delete.
  • neode-ui/public/packages/wireguard.apk (17 MB) — official WireGuard Android APK containing GPL-2.0 libwg components; redistribution triggers GPL source-offer. Unreferenced since the FIPS migration — delete.
  • neode-ui/public/packages/atob.s9pk (24 MB) — Start9 service package, unknown license, referenced only by a test script. Delete.
  • demo/content/music/ (18 full tracks, ~150 MB) and demo/peer-media/ (17 photos/book covers/film posters) — no recorded rights. If they're your own/AI-generated work, document that in a demo/content/README; otherwise remove.
  • neode-ui/public/assets/video/video-intro.mp4, Kratter.MP3, photographic bg-*.jpg backgrounds, UI/arcade sound effects in assets/audio/ — same: document provenance (user-made per project convention) or replace. welcome-noderunner.mp3 is ElevenLabs TTS — their commercial-use terms allow this on paid plans; note it.
  • Registry: redis:7.4.8 (scripts/image-versions.sh REDIS_IMAGE) — Redis ≥ 7.4 is RSALv2/SSPLv1, not open source; re-hosting it on your registry is redistribution under a restricted license. Switch to Valkey (BSD-3, already mirrored) everywhere.

4. VERIFY — unknown/third-party provenance

  • neode-ui/public/assets/img/mesh-devices/ (36 SVGs) — almost certainly Meshtastic project device artwork (meshtastic/web is GPL-3.0). Confirm source; either replace with original art or comply with the upstream license + attribution.
  • neode-ui/public/assets/icon/ — barbarian.svg, batteries.svg match game-icons.net (CC BY 3.0 — visible attribution required); pixel-style icons match pixelarticons (MIT). Confirm and add attribution, or replace.
  • Redacted/redacted.regular.ttf — upstream is SIL OFL 1.1 but no license file is shipped. Add OFL.txt or delete (unused).
  • indeedhub — submodule (private gitea) not checked out; no known license, yet indeedhub{,-api,-ffmpeg}:1.0.0 images are distributed via registry/ISO. indeedhub-ffmpeg implies a bundled FFmpeg (LGPL/GPL → source-offer obligations). Must license the project and audit the ffmpeg build before public release.
  • minmoto/fmcd v0.8.0 and ark-bitcoin/bark (barkd) — binaries redistributed in your images; verify upstream licenses (bark claims Apache-2.0/MIT dual) and include their notices.
  • Start9/StartOS heritage — core/{js-engine,container-init,models,helpers} are StartOS-derived (embassy paths, s9pk handling). start-os is MIT → attribution required if kept. Better: delete these four crates — they are not workspace members, cannot compile (broken ../../patch-db path dep), and carry an unpinned yajrc = "*" git dep on a moving branch. Deleting removes both the attribution question and dead code.
  • Reticulum (RNS 1.3.5 + LXMF) — verified: custom "Reticulum License" — MIT-style plus field-of-use restrictions (no systems designed to harm humans; no AI/ML training-dataset use). Redistribution is permitted, so shipping the PyInstaller archy-reticulum-daemon binary is fine if the license text is included with it — but the OS cannot claim to be 100 % OSI-open-source while bundling it. Options: include + disclose (recommended, matches "plan for decentralization" honesty), or make the daemon an optional download.

5. REQUIRED — attribution / notice machinery (currently absent)

Nearly every permissive license (MIT/BSD/ISC/Apache) requires reproducing copyright + license text in distributed binaries — and right now every distribution channel strips them:

  • Rust binaries (649 crates, ~85 % MIT/Apache dual): generate THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES with cargo-about (or cargo-license) in CI; ship it in the ISO at e.g. /usr/share/doc/archipelago/. Include ring's three license files (LICENSE, LICENSE-BoringSSL, LICENSE-other-bits) and note the system OpenSSL (Apache-2.0) linked via ssh2.
  • Web bundle: Vite/esbuild strips all @license comments from web/dist. Add rollup-plugin-license/vite-plugin-license to emit a third-party attribution file, or add an "Open-source licenses" page in the UI. Runtime deps needing notices: vue/vue-router/pinia/vue-i18n (MIT), d3 (ISC), leaflet (BSD-2), dompurify (elect Apache-2.0 of its MPL/Apache dual), fuse.js (Apache-2.0), qrcode/qr-scanner/qrloop/buffer/fast-json-patch (MIT).
  • Android APK: packaging.excludes strips META-INF license texts and there is no licenses screen. Add an OSS-licenses screen or bundled licenses.txt covering AndroidX/Compose/OkHttp/ZXing (Apache-2.0), fips © 2026 Johnathan Corgan (MIT — the core of the VPN feature), tokio/tracing (MIT), subtle (BSD-3), tun (WTFPL — permissive, just list it), secp256k1 family (CC0). Generate the Rust side from the committed Cargo.lock with cargo-about.
  • AIUI demo bundle (demo/aiui/ — committed minified build): bundles Mermaid, Cytoscape, KaTeX, D3, Lodash, Workbox (all MIT/BSD). Add a THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES file next to it (or rebuild with a license plugin).
  • Keep the intact MIT headers in the two vendored qrcode.js copies (docker/lnd-ui, docker/electrs-ui) — already compliant, don't minify them.
  • Fonts kept: Montserrat (OFL.txt present ✓), Open Sans (Apache LICENSE.txt present ✓) — keep license files adjacent to the font files in dist.

6. REQUIRED — distribution-level obligations (ISO & registry)

The ISO redistributes a full Debian (trixie) system plus ~29 container image tarballs; the private registry re-hosts upstream images. Re-hosting = redistribution, same obligations as bundling.

  • GPL source offer for the ISO — kernel, GRUB, busybox/live-boot, coreutils, nftables, cryptsetup, wireguard-tools, SYSLINUX isohdpfx.bin, etc. Easiest compliance: keep /usr/share/doc/*/copyright (the build already does ✓) and publish, per release, either a mirror of the exact Debian source packages (apt-get source snapshot / snapshot.debian.org pointer) or a written offer in the docs. Add this to the release checklist.
  • AGPLv3 images redistributed (mempool, Grafana, Vaultwarden, SearXNG, PhotoPrism, Nextcloud, Immich, CryptPad, MinIO): AGPL compliance = make corresponding source available. You ship a modified mempool-frontend (docker/mempool-frontend entrypoint patch) — the patch is in-repo, so compliance is met once the repo is public; state this in docs. For unmodified images, link upstream sources in the app catalog.
  • GPLv2/GPLv3 images (MariaDB, Jellyfin, AdGuard Home, strfry): unmodified redistribution → provide license text + upstream source links (a license + sourceUrl field per app-catalog/catalog.json entry solves this catalog-wide).
  • Non-free firmware (firmware-realtek/iwlwifi/misc/linux-nonfree, intel/amd microcode): redistributable but proprietary — disclose in docs ("includes non-free firmware for hardware support"), like Debian's own non-free-firmware ISOs do.
  • The ISO build's live-server image capture (podman save of whatever matches on the dev server) is a compliance hazard — bundle only from the audited image list.
  • FIPS daemon (jmcorgan/fips v0.4.1, MIT ✓) and nostr-rs-relay binary (MIT ✓): include their license texts in the notices bundle.

7. Housekeeping (supports compliance)

  • Add lockfiles + pinned versions in apps/* (currently floating ^ ranges, violating the project's own pinning rule) — reproducibility is also what makes license audits stay true.
  • Android fips dep is pinned to a personal fork rev (9qeklajc/fips-native@46494a74) — mirror or vendor it so outside contributors can build.
  • Move @types/dompurify to devDeps; refresh stale neode-ui/node_modules.
  • Add a NOTICE file at root naming: fips (Johnathan Corgan, MIT), Start9 start-os (if any derived code remains), Kazuhiko Arase qrcode.js, font licenses, icon attributions.
  • Consider CI license gating: cargo-deny (Rust) + license-checker (npm) with an allowlist, so new copyleft deps are caught at PR time.

Quick reference: what's already clean

  • All 649 Rust crates except zbase32: permissive or dual-licensed.
  • All 833 npm packages in neode-ui: no GPL/AGPL anywhere; only dev-tool LGPL (sharp's libvips, never distributed).
  • Android Gradle deps: 100 % Apache-2.0, all pinned, no Play Services/telemetry.
  • FIPS mesh: MIT (© 2026 Johnathan Corgan) — keep notice.
  • js-engine binds deno_core (MIT) as a crate, nothing vendored — moot if dead crates are deleted.
  • reticulum-daemon Python is original code; obligations attach only to the PyInstaller binary (see §4).
  • Bitcoin Core/Knots, LND, BTCPay, Electrs, Fedimint, core-lightning, Gitea, Home Assistant, Tailscale, Portainer, Uptime-Kuma, filebrowser, ollama, penpot: MIT/Apache/BSD/Zlib/MPL — link + notice is enough.