rightsince

RightSince is a lightweight, open‑source rights‑management framework that provides developers and organizations with a simple API for handling digital property, licences and user entitlements. The project was initiated in 2017 by a group of lawyers and software engineers who sought to bridge the gap between legal requirements for copyright claims and the practical needs of web and mobile applications. The first public release (v1.0) was published to GitHub under an Apache‑2.0 license, encouraging contributions from the wider community.

The core of RightSince is written in TypeScript and ships a Node.js server along with a set of RESTful endpoints. Developers can create, assign and revoke licences, query entitlements and validate usage against a central policy engine. The framework also includes a client-side library for use in browser and React Native projects, allowing seamless integration with existing authentication systems such as OAuth2 and JWT. Built‑in support for common databases (PostgreSQL, MongoDB) and caching layers enable high‑performance deployments in cloud environments. RightSince is designed to be modular: plugins can be added to support additional business logic, payment gateways, or analytics.

Because the codebase is open source, a large number of forks have been created for specific industry use cases, such as media streaming, e‑learning and SaaS licensing. The project has been cited in several academic papers on digital rights management and has been used in pilot programs by nonprofit publishers looking to digitise archival content. Contributing guidelines encourage best practices in code quality and test coverage, resulting in a stable release cycle with quarterly minor releases.

The project hosts an active discussion forum and a public issue tracker, where developers can propose new features, report bugs or request documentation. RightSince’s community emphasizes privacy‑first principles, providing transparent audit logs and compliance tools for GDPR and other data‑protection frameworks.