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ADR 002 — Drop CC BY-NC sources; treat Groundfact as a commercial use

Status: Accepted · Date: 2026-08-08 · Deviates from: spec §5.1 (row 3), §5.5

Context

Spec §5.1 includes WHO GHO as a Phase-1 source and handles its CC BY-NC-SA licence with a rehost=false flag (§5.5): ingest for internal computation, never serve our copy, link out for downloads, cite the origin.

Groundfact is owned by TWAKKA LTD and its stated primary goal (§1) is to act as a capability showcase for consulting positioning. Whether that constitutes "non-commercial" is genuinely unsettled, and the spec never resolves it — it appears only as a licensing caveat.

Two clauses make the rehost=false approach uncomfortable rather than merely cautious:

  • NC. A portfolio artifact for a limited company, whose explicit purpose is winning consulting work, is not obviously non-commercial.
  • SA. The product computes derived indicators and reconciliation deltas. Serving a derived number is arguably distributing an adaptation, which ShareAlike would reach even though the original observation is never re-hosted. "Internal computation, external derived output" is a thinner line than §5.5 implies.

Decision

Treat Groundfact as a commercial use. Drop WHO GHO from v1 entirely, along with HDX's CC BY-NC Nepal subnational DHS. Do not build the who connector.

Rationale

The cost is much lower than it first appears. World Bank WDI carries life expectancy, under-5 mortality, immunisation coverage and most headline health indicators under CC BY 4.0. The S0 spike also found UNESCO UIS live and rich (5,063 indicators, 20,034 Nepal records) — see ADR 003 — which back-fills further capacity.

Against that: one fewer connector to build and maintain, and — more importantly — a licence register with no unresolved entries in it at launch. §5.5 makes that register a first-class, publicly rendered artifact and a CI gate. The register is part of the product's credibility claim. Publishing one whose own author is unsure about an entry undermines exactly what it is meant to demonstrate.

Consequences

  • WHO-specific series (health-system indicators, NCD mortality detail) are unavailable in v1. If a golden-set question needs one, the honest empty-state path (§7.7 step 3) handles it.
  • The decision is reversible: if Groundfact is later established as non-commercial, the connector can be added and the register updated. The rehost column already exists to express it.
  • evals/golden.yml must avoid asserting on WHO-only indicators.