Licensing unification

[anotherjulien]

@GreenGrassBlueOcean touched on the disparate licenses we use on the various projects between the integration, the library, the MCP servers and the Encyclopedia and how it could come to bite us in the ass in the near future.

I have to agree that this will be a problem.
I chose semi-randomly 6 years ago when I started for the original integration/library, so I'm not particularly attached to that idea.
I chose GPL3 for the Encyclopedia because it seemed the most OpenSource minded one, but it is true it will be a problem if its content is to be ingested by the MCP servers under MIT.

And on the other hand, Home Assistant itself is under Apache license I think?

Bottom line, should we move all the repositories under the same license, and that license be the same as the Home Assistant project?

[GreenGrassBlueOcean]

Yes — we should unify, and we should pick the license Home Assistant itself uses regardless of whether MyHOME ever lands in Core or stays on HACS.

HACS does not care. Core does: HA is Apache-2.0 and the CLA is Apache-2.0. Keeping AGPL / LGPL / GPL / MIT across the org only makes sense if we enjoy relicensing under review pressure later. We should not.

The license

Apache License 2.0 for every repository in this organisation.

That is the target. One SPDX id. No dual track. No “permissive if Core, copyleft if HACS.”

Repository | Today | Target -- | -- | -- MyHOME | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 OWNd | LGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 openwebnet-mcp | MIT | Apache-2.0 OpenWebNet-Encyclopedia | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0

Apache-2.0 over MIT because it is the HA license (patent grant included). MIT on the MCP is already compatible; moving it to Apache-2.0 is just so the org has one answer instead of two.

Encyclopedia stays Apache-2.0 as well so MCP and the library can ingest it without a GPL problem. If we later decide documentation wants a pure content license, CC-BY-4.0 is the only alternative I would accept — not GPL. Default is still Apache-2.0 so we actually unify.

Why not keep LGPL on OWNd

LGPL on a PyPI client is the grey area. Maybe Core would accept it after a review; maybe not. Apache-2.0 removes that question. Same for AGPL on the integration: it is the worst fit with HA, Core or HACS.

What has to happen before the SPDX string changes

Relicensing is consent, not a file edit.

1. Explicit OK from the copyright holders (Julien already said he is not attached to the original pick — that is the main one).
2. New LICENSE + NOTICE on each repo.
3. SPDX headers / PyPI License metadata / README badges in the same pass.
4. Old tagged releases stay on the previous license; only master/main and new releases move.

If nobody objects here, next step is a single tracking issue that lists those four repos and the contributor sign-off, then we do them together so they cannot drift again.

[anotherjulien]

I agree with Apache 2 for everything!