📜 License upgrade: MIT → Apache 2.0 + DCO

[green-dalii]

📜 License upgrade: MIT → Apache 2.0 + DCO

A short note on a quiet change behind the scenes — and why it's worth a few minutes of your attention if you've contributed, forked, or downstreamed this project.

What's happening

We've moved the project from the MIT License to the Apache License 2.0. The plugin itself, the API surface, the Obsidian Community Plugin listing, the Sponsor section — none of that changes. What changes is the legal framework underneath.

A new NOTICE file accompanies the LICENSE, listing the people who have written code in this repo so far. CONTRIBUTING.md now includes a Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO v1.1) section so future contributions are licensed clearly from the start.

The change is live on main as of today. If you install or update to the latest release, nothing in your vault or workflow shifts.

Why this matters, briefly

When the project started, MIT was the right call — one maintainer, simple scope, "share freely" was the entire thesis. A few versions later, the picture is different:

• The plugin now pulls in AI-SDK v6 and four of its sub-packages as runtime dependencies. Those packages ship under Apache 2.0 themselves. Aligning our license avoids a quiet mismatch in the dependency tree.
• The repo has six human contributors (including DocTpoint's hub-retirement signal, and propose the core Monte Carlo PPR concept. Indexed-Apogrypha's source-slug fingerprint, and dmarchevsky's review feedback, and FrancoTampieri's Italian locale support, and YounianC's UX improvement) and a community of issue reporters. Apache 2.0 gives every contributor a clear, explicit patent grant and a reciprocal commitment that their own patents aren't used against the project later. That's a small but meaningful protection for volunteer work.
• The brand "Karpathy Wiki" / "Greener-Dalii" is something we'd like to keep out of confusingly-renamed forks. Apache 2.0 includes a trademark clause that does this cleanly without restricting actual forking, modification, or commercial use.

What it does not change

• ✅ The plugin is still free, open-source, and on the Obsidian Community Plugin marketplace.
• ✅ You can still fork, modify, sell services that use it, and distribute closed-source derivatives — Apache 2.0 is MIT-plus, not MIT-minus.
• ✅ You can still use it commercially. The Sponsor section is unchanged.
• ✅ MIT-licensed forks remain MIT-licensed at the point of fork. This license change applies going forward; nothing retroactively relicenses past contributions differently than they already were.

The full text of the new license is in LICENSE. The contributor attribution is in NOTICE.

If you've contributed code

Your past contributions are still under the MIT terms they were originally submitted under (since MIT was the only license in force at the time). Going forward, new contributions will be Apache 2.0 by default — please add a Signed-off-by: line to your commit messages (see the new section in CONTRIBUTING.md) to certify that.

If you object to this change for any reason, please comment below — we're happy to discuss.

Thanks

To everyone who's filed an issue, opened a PR, sent a star, sponsored a coffee, or quietly translated a string in a language I don't speak — this kind of project only exists because of that. The NOTICE file lists the people who wrote code; the community is larger than any file can hold.

— Greener-Dalii

cc @DocTpoint @Indexed-Apogrypha @dmarchevsky @FrancoTampieri @YounianC — thank you for your contributions to the codebase. If you have any questions or concerns about this license change, please leave a comment and we'll work it out.

[DocTpoint]

Thanks for the cc, @green-dalii — no concerns on the Apache 2.0 move at all. For a project now carrying AI-SDK v6 and a handful of contributors, the explicit patent grant and the trademark clause are the right protections, and "MIT-plus, not MIT-minus" is a fair summary. And thanks for folding in the Monte Carlo PPR note — appreciated. Good to see the #198 thread live on as a discussion.