Foundation
Legal & Ethical Principles
This page is not a legal disclaimer. It explains the philosophy behind the archive and why it has been designed this way.
LUX Light Archive exists to preserve more than information.
It exists to preserve continuity.
Lighthouses change.
Lenses are relocated.
Stations become museums.
Towers disappear.
Lights move.
Functions evolve.
Heritage survives because meaning remains traceable.
The archive follows the same principle.
I
Preservation over ownership
The purpose of the archive is not to own heritage.
It is to preserve knowledge, provenance, and continuity.
The archive exists to help knowledge remain accessible across generations.
II
Open where possible
Knowledge should remain open whenever it can.
Original research, descriptions, and metadata are published openly.
Open access encourages education, research, and collaboration.
Open where possible. Respect where required.
III
Respect where required
Not everything can or should become open.
Many photographs, scans, and historical documents belong to museums, archives, photographers, and institutions.
Their rights remain respected.
The archive never assumes ownership of third-party works.
IV
Traceability
Every statement should have a source whenever possible.
Every image should have provenance.
Every contribution should remain attributable.
The archive values provenance as highly as preservation.
Provenance matters.
V
Identity through transformation
The archive is built around a simple observation:
Lighthouses survive many transformations.
Names change.
Structures change.
Optics move.
Lights are replaced.
Administrations change.
Yet something continues.
The archive attempts to preserve that continuity.
The persistence of identity through transformation.
This principle guides not only lighthouse records but also the software architecture and governance of the archive.
VI
Why AGPL
The archive software is open because digital heritage should remain open.
However, improvements to the archive should also remain available to the community.
The AGPL license ensures that people may build upon the archive while contributing improvements back to the public ecosystem.
The goal is collaboration rather than proprietary fragmentation.
For formal software licensing terms, see Rights & Reuse.
VII
Why Creative Commons
Original archive content uses Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA).
The goal is to encourage education, research, and cultural preservation while preventing uncontrolled commercial reuse detached from attribution and provenance.
For reuse terms and attribution guidance, see Rights & Reuse and How to Cite.
VIII
Stewardship
LUX143 considers itself a steward rather than an owner.
The archive preserves connections between places, objects, documents, and stories.
Its responsibility is maintaining continuity.
IX
Artificial Intelligence
AI may assist indexing, translation, search, relationships, and metadata suggestions.
Human review remains responsible for historical interpretation.
AI supports orientation.
It does not replace scholarship.
X
Future generations
Digital archives should outlive current technologies.
Formats will change.
Software will change.
Websites will change.
What matters is preserving meaning, provenance, and relationships.