The repository is licensed per component. SolidLSP (src/solidlsp,
test/solidlsp, test/resources) remains MIT-licensed and independently
reusable; the Serena application (src/serena, src/interprompt, scripts,
test/serena, docs) is licensed under GPL-3.0-or-later starting with the v2
licensing transition. The change is not retroactive: all releases and
commits up to v1.7.0 / 74c38a65 (tag mit-final) remain available under MIT.
Since MIT is GPL-compatible, a distribution combining both (such as the
serena-agent package) is as a whole subject to GPL-3.0-or-later, while the
SolidLSP files themselves stay MIT and can be extracted and used separately
under MIT terms. The distribution metadata therefore declares
GPL-3.0-or-later, with both license texts shipped alongside it.
Serena originally began under the GPL (v2) and was switched to MIT in
May 2025 following community requests. We consider that change a mistake;
the substantial changes in v2 make this the appropriate time to revert it.
We want the best version of Serena to remain free.
Changes:
* LICENSE is now the licensing overview; canonical license texts live in
LICENSES/ (MIT.txt is the previous LICENSE verbatim, GPL-3.0-or-later.txt
is the unmodified FSF text)
* pyproject.toml declares the PEP 639 license expression
"GPL-3.0-or-later" and bundles LICENSE and LICENSES/* as license files;
the deprecated MIT classifier is dropped and flake.nix declares gpl3Plus;
README has per-component license badges and a License section
* SPDX-License-Identifier headers in all Python sources under src/ and
scripts/, added by the new idempotent scripts/add_spdx_headers.py, which
gen_prompt_factory.py also uses to keep the header on the generated
module; existing third-party notices are preserved
* CLA.md: Contributor License Agreement (contributor retains copyright;
grants a perpetual, irrevocable license including relicensing under any
terms, incl. proprietary/commercial; patent grant; authority
representations), to be enforced repository-wide via cla-assistant.io
* CONTRIBUTING.md, PR template and a new docs page explain the licensing
boundary and the CLA workflow
* Add LLM prompt factory (yaml-based)
* Add list_dir tool
* Add onboarding tool (which returns prompt only, as registered MCP prompts
do not appear to be usable by Claude Desktop)
Dominik Jain