The AGPL Open Commons manifesto.

decant-core is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPL-3.0-only). That choice is not incidental — it is a product decision.

Parser infrastructure belongs in a shared commons

AI platforms change constantly. Every time ChatGPT redecorates a message or Claude changes how artifacts render, somebody has to re-learn the DOM. If each exporter maintains its own private parser stack, a platform update means the same broken logic gets re-debugged dozens of times — and the fixes disappear forever.

decant-core exists to be the opposite: a shared copyleft commons where improvements stay available to the ecosystem instead of being siloed into proprietary forks.

What AGPL means for you

• Using the library for yourself or your open-source project — great, and the most common case. Attribution requirements are standard.
• Running a modified version as a network service — you must offer the corresponding source to users of that service. This is the clause that keeps fixes available to the commons even behind a server.
• Proprietary, closed-source embedding — not supported for the core engine, by design. Reach out if you believe you have a case that should be discussed.

Where to see the full terms

The complete text lives in LICENSE. Our natural community is open-source extensions, exporters, archival and research tools, and self-hosted applications — projects that can contribute fixes back to the commons.