Solus, the independent rolling-release Linux distro, has announced progress in relicensing its package repository under the Mozilla Public License 2.0 (MPL-2.0).
The project has begun contacting contributors who have not yet approved the change, an important step toward resolving licensing uncertainties and enabling closer technical collaboration with aerynOS.
The initiative follows a May announcement in which Solus explained that its package repository had developed licensing ambiguities during several infrastructure migrations over the project’s history.
Originally, the distribution’s package recipes, stored in package.yml files, were maintained in a single repository under GPL-2.0-or-later. When development moved to a self-hosted Phabricator instance, the recipes were separated into individual repositories, and their original license files were not carried over.
When Solus eventually returned to GitHub and consolidated its packages into the current getsolus/packages repository, the missing licensing information remained unresolved.
Although the repository is publicly accessible, the absence of clear licensing terms creates uncertainty about how its contents can be legally reused, modified, and redistributed. It also complicates contributions made during periods without an explicit license.
To address this, Solus selected MPL-2.0, a file-level copyleft license that requires modifications to covered files to remain under the same license while allowing those files to be combined with differently licensed code.
More importantly, MPL-2.0 is also used by aerynOS, making it a suitable choice for the two distributions to exchange package recipes without introducing additional licensing conflicts.
If you’re wondering what aerynOS has to do with this, Solus has announced plans to gradually adopt packaging technologies developed by aerynOS. The distribution currently uses aerynOS’s ent and boulder tools in limited parts of its packaging infrastructure and intends to transition its existing package recipes to the aerynOS format over time.
Sharing package recipes would allow the projects to reuse packaging work rather than maintaining equivalent definitions for the same software independently. However, Solus has made clear that its current licensing situation must be resolved before that exchange can proceed as intended.
The relationship between the distributions is also already visible in their development activities. For example, Solus has previously aligned parts of its kernel packaging with aerynOS, while both projects continue working toward greater compatibility between their packaging systems.
Meanwhile, aerynOS itself continues to advance. As we reported recently, the distribution has made Budgie 10.10.3 broadly available in its Unstable Stream, alongside COSMIC Desktop 1.10 and other major package updates.
For now, Solus’s relicensing process remains ongoing. The first round of emails has been sent to contributors who previously worked on the Solus packages repository. Contributors can provide consent by replying to the email or commenting on the project’s dedicated GitHub issue.
For more details, see the official announcement.
Image credits: Solus
