Why we open-sourced a baby health app, and what the license carve-outs are
My wife Oana is a neonatologist. I write software. When we became parents we wanted an app that was quiet at night, quick with one hand, and honest about what is normal. We could not find one without ads, streaks or a subscription wall in front of the safety content, so we built Enfold. Last week we made all of it public: https://github.com/enfold-baby/enfold Why open source for a health app A…
When Oana, a neonatologist, and the author, a software developer, became parents, they sought an app that was unobtrusive, user-friendly, and truthful about normal infant health. Unable to find such an app, they decided to create Enfold. After launching the app, they open-sourced it, making all aspects of the software available on GitHub.
The motivation behind open-sourcing the baby health app was to provide transparent claims about privacy and security. Unlike other apps in the category, Enfold does not contain any ad or analytics SDKs, nor does it store data on external servers. All data remains on the user's device until the user chooses to sync it over HTTPS to a self-hosted FastAPI backend.
Open-sourcing also allows healthcare professionals to review the content. Each learn card, which contains information on normal infant development, is accompanied by a list of sources. A unit test ensures that every card shipped with the app includes its sources, preventing the app from being released with unattributed content. Apple rejected one of the app's submissions due to guideline 1.4.1, which requires medical content to have citations. The author believes that this requirement ultimately improved the product.
The software stack used in Enfold includes Flutter for the UI, Riverpod and go_router for state management, Drift for offline-first SQLite storage, FastAPI and Postgres for the sync server, and Redis for caching. The authentication system uses magic-code sign-in, and the app is accompanied by a static website hosted behind Caddy. The entire stack is version-controlled using Docker Compose and Flutter.
The open-source license for the code is AGPL-3.0-or-later, which is a copyleft license that requires any modifications made to the software by third-party developers to be published under the same license. This ensures that the app remains open-source and prevents commercial forks from being created.
For the learn cards, which provide medical guidance, the license is CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. This license requires that any medical guidance shared must be attributed, and it cannot be modified or used for commercial purposes. If someone wishes to translate the cards, they must open an issue, and the authors will work with a clinician to ensure the accuracy of the translation.
The brand elements, such as the name, logo, and illustrations, are not licensed. Parents are free to modify these elements, but if they create a fork and distribute it via an app store, they must rename it, replace the brand elements, and illustrate the app with original artwork. The authors do not want parents to install the wrong version of Enfold by accident.
The app is currently available on the App Store, and its development continues. English is the only language supported at this time, but Romanian is planned for future updates. Each child can only be tracked on one device, although the server can handle multiple children. The app is awaiting approval from the Google Play Store, while its App Store version is already live.
Those interested in contributing to the project can find build instructions in the CONTRIBUTING.md file, which outlines the steps required to build both the backend and the app locally using Docker Compose and Flutter. The open-source repository can be found at https://github.com/enfold-baby/enfold, and the project website is at https://enfold.baby.
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