ADR-0007: AGPL-3.0 + Commercial License (dual licensing)

Status: Accepted Date: 2026-08-14

Context

Hercules Studio should be:

• Free for personal/non-commercial use
• Require a commercial license for corporate scenarios (CRM/ECM integration, enterprise deployment)

Decision

AGPL-3.0 (Community / Non-profit) + Commercial License for corporate use.

Rationale

• AGPL-3.0: Strong copyleft — any modified version distributed over network must share source. Corporations using it in SaaS/internal services must either open-source their modifications or buy a commercial license.
• Dual licensing: Same model as MongoDB (historic), Grafana, iText. Well-understood.
• Trust-based for MVP: No technical enforcement initially. License consent dialog at first-run. Commercial license key is just an indicator.
• Corporate = by use case: Integration with CRM/ECM, enterprise deployment = commercial. Personal/research/education = free.

License consent UI (first-run)

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Hercules Studio — License Agreement              │
│                                                   │
│  [AGPL-3.0 full text...]                          │
│                                                   │
│  ☐ I use Hercules Studio for non-commercial /     │
│    personal purposes (AGPL-3.0)                   │
│                                                   │
│  [Accept (Non-profit)]  [I have a commercial      │
│                          license key]  [Decline]   │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

• “Accept (Non-profit)” → continue, save license-consent.json with type: "nonprofit"
• “I have a commercial license key” → input key → save type: "commercial", licenseKey: ...
• “Decline” → close Studio

Consent persistence

userData/license-consent.json:

{
  "consentVersion": 1,
  "acceptedAt": "2026-08-14T...",
  "type": "nonprofit",
  "licenseKey": null
}

Re-shown on consent version change (license terms updated).

Consequences

• Studio = open source (AGPL-3.0)
• LICENSE file = AGPL-3.0
• LICENSE-COMMERCIAL.md = commercial terms
• README/docs mention dual licensing
• No technical enforcement for MVP (trust-based)
• Studio is NOT bundled with .NET agent (agent has its own license)

Addendum (2026-10-07) — the topology this ADR assumed no longer holds

Status of this addendum: records a change made when the project was relicensed to AGPL-3.0 for 2.0.0. The decision above stands; the distribution topology it reasoned about has changed.

The ADR was written when Studio was a separate desktop application. It concluded “Studio is NOT bundled with .NET agent (agent has its own license)”, which left MIT the natural choice for the repository root.

ADR-0009 removed the Electron shell. The agent now serves the Studio SPA itself at /ui (http://localhost:8421/ui/) — a single process, no separate frontend. That has two consequences this ADR did not anticipate:

1. The repository is no longer cleanly separable. An MIT-licensed agent distributing an AGPL-licensed SPA over the network is a distribution coupling MIT does not permit to stay one-way. Rather than preserve a split the topology no longer supports, the whole repository is licensed AGPL-3.0 + commercial as of 2.0.0.
2. AGPL §13 is now triggered in practice. Section 13 obliges an operator of a modified network-service version to offer its corresponding source to remote users. Before 2.0.0 the agent was distributed as software; from 2.0.0 it is a network service hosting the AGPL Studio, which is the case §13 was written for.

Concretely, as of 2.0.0:

• LICENSE = AGPL-3.0 (previously MIT)
• LICENSE-COMMERCIAL.md added — the commercial path the ADR required but which had never been written
• src/hercules-studio/package.json already declared "license": "AGPL-3.0", so it is now consistent with the repository rather than contradicting it
• License consent is already implemented in Studio (LicenseDialog.vue, platform/web.ts, en + ru) and requires no new work

This was an owner decision, not an inferred fix. Existing MIT consumers are affected, so the relicensing is a separate commit carrying a BREAKING CHANGE changelog entry — it must never be mistaken for an incidental edit.

An open question that is not resolved here, and is a business decision rather than a release blocker: whether a commercial license should cover the agent + Studio bundle as shipped, now that the two can no longer be licensed apart.

Alternatives considered

• MIT: too permissive, no corporate incentive to buy license
• BSL (Business Source License): becomes open after N years; less familiar to users
• Apache 2.0: permissive, no copyleft pressure
• Proprietary closed-source: contradicts open-source ethos of Hercules