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docs: CC0 for the system spec and shared tooling

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The README asserted "GPLv3, matching the Jellyfin plugin it serves" with no
LICENSE file behind it. That answer conflicts with the architecture the same
README describes forty lines earlier, in two ways.

This repository is vendored *into* the other three, which carry three different
licences (MIT, GPL-3.0, GPL-3.0-or-later). Copyleft here pushes obligations
downstream into repositories that did not choose them, for the sake of a build
script. The dependency also runs inward, so "matching the plugin" had the
direction backwards — this repo does not serve the plugin, the plugin consumes
it. CC0 imposes nothing on any of the three.

A specification also has to be freely implementable. The design assumes third
parties reimplement it: the audio-signature conformance fixture exists so that
"an implementation can be written from that file alone", and federation is
worthless if only one server implementation may exist. A software licence on a
specification invites the question of whether an implementation written from it
is a derivative work; CC0 removes the question rather than answering it.

Same reasoning as the CC0 licence on contributed manifests (JRay-public-server
UR-019): where an artefact's whole purpose is to be copied and reimplemented,
asserting rights over it costs more than it protects.

Text from creativecommons.org, not transcribed.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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dtourolle
2026-07-31 10:44:14 +02:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent 17106f3370
commit bddaddac5d
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README.md
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@@ -187,4 +187,35 @@ are batched, so these ship together rather than piecemeal.
## Licence
GPLv3, matching the Jellyfin plugin it serves.
**This repository — the system spec, the working notes, and the traceability
tooling — is [CC0 1.0](LICENSE).** Public domain dedication: no attribution
required, no conditions.
That is deliberate, and it is not the licence the components use:
| Repository | Licence |
|---|---|
| **This one** (specs + shared tooling) | **CC0 1.0** |
| `scene-actor-extraction` | MIT, with a model/third-party addendum |
| `jRay` | GPL-3.0 |
| `JRay-public-server` | GPL-3.0-or-later (code) · CC0 1.0 (contributed manifests) |
Two reasons, both structural rather than philosophical:
- **This repository is vendored *into* the other three**, as described above —
and they carry three different licences. CC0 is the only choice that imposes
nothing on any of them: no attribution to propagate, no copyleft reaching into
an MIT repository, no aggregation question to answer. A copyleft licence here
would push obligations downstream into repositories that did not choose them,
for the sake of a build script.
- **A specification has to be freely implementable.** The design assumes third
parties reimplement it — the audio-signature conformance fixture exists
precisely so that "an implementation can be written from that file alone", and
federation is worthless if only one server implementation may exist. Licensing
the spec under a software licence invites the question of whether an
implementation written from it is a derivative work. CC0 removes the question
rather than answering it.
The same reasoning produced the CC0 licence on contributed manifests
(`JRay-public-server` SPEC §5b): where the artefact's whole purpose is to be
copied and reimplemented, asserting rights over it costs more than it protects.