Use GPL-3.0-or-later for the whole repository
| Status | Date |
|---|---|
| accepted | 2026-09-05 |
Context
Section titled “Context”Volant is built to execute unmodified Ansible modules. To do so, the controller will call ansible-core’s own payload builder through an embedded Python interpreter, and the agent will ship ansible-core’s module_utils to managed hosts. ansible-core is licensed under GPL-3.0. Importing a GPL library at runtime and redistributing parts of it makes a permissive license for Volant legally fragile.
This release is not there yet. It embeds no Python interpreter, carries no ansible-core code, and runs only the native modules. The license is picked for the architecture the project is heading for rather than for the one it has, because a repository whose contributors have all signed off under one license is hard to move to another.
Decision
Section titled “Decision”The whole repository is licensed GPL-3.0-or-later, the license of Ansible and of most collections.
Consequences
Section titled “Consequences”- Contributors sign off their commits under the Developer Certificate of Origin.
- Adoption is not affected: Ansible itself is a GPL command-line tool.
- When the payload builder is rewritten in Rust and the agent no longer contains ansible-core code, the agent crate may be relicensed under Apache-2.0. That will be a new decision.
Update, 2026-09-22
Section titled “Update, 2026-09-22”The context above describes the project when this decision was taken. Since ADR 0006, Volant ships ansible-core’s module_utils to managed hosts, and the controller calls ansible-core through a helper process rather than an embedded interpreter. The reasoning for the license is unchanged.