Open-source Rust scaffolding UI for SPFx: can it bundle templates derived from generator output?

[Francois Huyzers (mentenaz)]

Hi! I’m building an open-source interface in Rust (a panel inside a code editor) that scaffolds new projects from templates. SPFx is the first generator I’m adding: you pick an SPFx version, answer a few questions (solution name, web part names), and it creates the project offline in a few seconds, with an optional step to run npm install afterwards. It’s free and non-commercial, and I’d like it to be useful to the SPFx community.

To make it work offline, the SPFx templates would ship with the tool. They’re based on a fresh yo @microsoft/generator-sharepoint run (1.23.2) with placeholder names, which I then turn into templates (names replaced by tokens, the main component rewritten as a React function component). The tool doesn’t include or redistribute any @microsoft/sp-* packages. Dependencies stay in package.json and are installed from npm by the user.

Reading the SPFx licence terms, I understand that using SPFx to build solutions is fine, and that distributing the software on its own isn’t (3(d), 3(f)). I couldn’t tell whether the generator’s output counts as “the software”. Could someone from the SPFx team clarify:

Is it OK to bundle and publish templates derived from the generator’s output, in an open-source tool, for free?
If yes, are there files I should replace or leave out, such as the stock images and Teams icons?
If not, is there a preferred way for tools like this to scaffold SPFx projects? Otherwise my fallback is to run the real generator on the user’s machine, and not ship any of its files.

Thanks for your time!