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I found this amazing project https://atlaskit.atlassian.com/. But after visit some pages about license issues I have a lot of confussion. Can I use Atlaskit in comercial projects and customize the controls?

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The main code page for the project says that

This is a mono-repo, which means that different parts of this repository can have different licenses.

The base level of the repository is licensed under Apache 2.0. There are separate license files (LICENSE) for each component under /packages that specify the license restrictions for each component. While most components are licensed under the Apache 2.0 license, please note packages containing styles, assets & icons are most likely licensed under the Atlassian Design Guidelines license.

The Atlassian Design Guidelines licence is definitely non-free, and unsuitable for commercial re-use. Right near the top, in s2, it says that

You may not use the ADG for any purpose not expressly permitted by this License Agreement. You may not modify, adapt, redistribute, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, or create derivative works of the ADG or any part of the ADG.

So as I read it (and IANAL/IANYL) you can use Atlaskit in a commercial project provided you don't use any of the styles, assets, and icons. You will then only have to honour the Apache 2.0 licence, s4 of which places certain requirements on you which aren't incompatible with a commercial release (inter alia give a copy of the licence, and a copy of the NOTICE file if one is provided, though I can't immediately see that one is).

But you should take proper legal advice before betting any kind of commercial enterprise on any code that you don't own the rights to.

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  • @maghatter. thanks for your answer. This is where things become complicated. For example npmjs.com/package/@atlaskit/reduced-ui-pack is Apache-2 but it contain styles of ADG.
    – cstff
    Oct 19, 2018 at 13:05
  • @cstff OK, but isn't that what I said in my answer? All the styles, assets, and icons tend to be under ADG; you can't use those. You probably can use the code. How is that complicated? I accept it may be fiddly separating them, but you get to decide how much work that will be, and how much work you'll save by reusing their code, and you make a rational decision.
    – MadHatter ♦
    Oct 19, 2018 at 13:07
  • I got a little confused by this too. According to that first instruction, "There are separate license files (LICENSE) for each component under /packages". I looked at some of the packages and all I saw state Apache 2.0. Even packages containing the CSS styles, or Atlassian logos ("theme" or "logo") have the Apache 2.0 LICENSE, and "Apache-2.0" in package.json.
    – Ben Jenkinson
    Nov 21, 2018 at 15:30
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    The "icon" package does explicitly include the Atlassian Design Guidelines license
    – Ben Jenkinson
    Nov 21, 2018 at 15:38
  • As far as I know, following packages have Atlassian Design Guidelines in their LICENSE file: @atlaskit/icon-object, @atlaskit/icon, @atlaskit/icon-file-type
    – Mikko Rantalainen
    Sep 29, 2020 at 13:27

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