arc42 License

Yes, you may use arc42 for private and commercial work.

The template is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. You may adapt it inside your organization without publishing your changes.

You may

• Copy and redistribute the arc42 template.
• Adapt it to your organization, tools and projects.
• Use it for commercial and private work.

You must

• Give appropriate credit.
• Link to the license and indicate significant changes.
• Publish adaptations under the same license, but only if you share them outside your organization.

What this means for companies

You can copy, modify and use arc42 inside your organization without ever publishing anything.

Copy and modify freely. Restructure the template, drop chapters, add your own, rename it, rebuild it in Confluence, Word or any other tool you like.

Internal adaptation is not sharing. The ShareAlike condition applies when you make an adapted version of the template available outside your organization. Whatever you change for your own teams stays yours, there is no obligation to publish it.

Attribution is required whenever you pass the template or an adaptation on to others. Credit Gernot Starke and Peter Hruschka, link to the license and say that you changed something. For purely internal use we simply appreciate the credit.

If you do publish an adapted template, on your website, in a public repository or as part of a product you ship, then that adapted template carries CC BY-SA 4.0 as well.

Your architecture content remains yours

The license applies to the arc42 template itself, meaning its structure, its headings and its explanatory text. Content that you create and place inside the template remains your own. You may use, protect or publish that content according to your own rules. Publishing an architecture document in arc42 structure does not place your content under CC BY-SA.

Attribution

The licensors are Gernot Starke and Peter Hruschka, the creators of arc42. Attribution may be provided in any reasonable manner, but not in a way that suggests they endorse your organization, system or adaptation.

The licensors cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms. For the precise legal wording, consult the complete Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

More questions

Our FAQ answers the two questions we hear most often:

• What’s the license for arc42?
• Are we allowed to customize arc42 for our own purpose?

This page is a plain-language summary and not legal advice. The Creative Commons license text is authoritative.