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Ship Your First Thing

Licensing

Summary

This repository ships under a dual-license model. Code is licensed under MIT (see LICENSE); course prose, lessons, exercises, and diagrams are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International — CC BY 4.0 (see LICENSE-content). Both licenses are permissive and reuse-friendly; the split exists so that downstream readers know which terms apply to which kind of artifact.

What is under MIT (LICENSE)

  • .ts, .tsx, .js, .json source files
  • Shell scripts and other executable scripts
  • Configuration files (e.g. tsconfig.json, package.json, .eslintrc, etc.)
  • Anything inside thread-project/ (the demo product, created in Phase 3)
  • .devcontainer.json and Codespaces configuration if present

What is under CC BY 4.0 (LICENSE-content)

  • .md files inside modules/ — every lesson body
  • Root-level course documents that are pure prose (see Cross-cutting artifacts below for the mixed cases)
  • Mermaid sources inside diagrams/
  • Lesson exercises and core reads

Cross-cutting artifacts (mixed)

These files mix prose with code references and we default to MIT for simplicity:

  • README.md
  • SETUP.md
  • CONTRIBUTING.md
  • LICENSING.md itself
  • BUDGET.md
  • WHAT-CHANGED.md
  • VERSIONS.md
  • GLOSSARY.md
  • CHEATSHEET.md
  • COMMON-ISSUES.md

These mix prose with code references; we default to MIT for simplicity. The substantive prose inside them is also reusable under CC BY 4.0 by request.

Why dual-license

Code is meant to be reused freely (MIT). Course prose and diagrams are meant to be redistributed with attribution (CC BY 4.0). This split mirrors how OSS courses like The Odin Project handle the question and lets contributors and readers know exactly which terms apply when they reuse a piece of the work.

Attribution example for prose

"Adapted from Ship Your First Thing (https://github.com/<owner>/<repo>) by <contributors>, used under CC BY 4.0."