LICENSE_FAQ.md
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# kageos License FAQ
This FAQ explains the project license in plain language. It is not legal advice,
and the full [LICENSE](LICENSE) controls if anything here is unclear or
inconsistent.
## What license does kageos use?
The kageos core platform is licensed under the Business Source License 1.1
(`BSL 1.1`) with Apache License 2.0 as the change license.
kageos is source-available today. It is not OSI open source today because the
current license restricts unauthorized commercial products and services built
from or substantially substituting for the kageos core platform.
## Can I self-host kageos?
Yes. You can self-host kageos for yourself, your team, your organization, or
Affiliates under common control, subject to the license terms.
## Can my company use kageos internally?
Yes. A company can deploy and use kageos for its own internal work, including
production use, as long as it is not offering kageos as a Restricted Commercial
Offering to third parties.
The BSL grant includes access by your Affiliates, employees, and contractors.
An Affiliate is an entity that controls, is controlled by, or is under common
control with you, using management power or more than fifty percent of voting
interests as the test.
Limited customer-facing interactions and outputs are also permitted as
described below. Commercial authorization is required when external customers
receive the kageos platform itself, a hosted workspace or managed instance,
white-label or OEM access, an embedded platform, or a competing offering.
## Does self-hosting have to be on an internal network?
No. The license does not require kageos to run only on a private LAN.
You may deploy kageos on your own server, cloud account, VPN, intranet, or a
publicly reachable domain, as long as the instance is for you, your team, your
organization, Affiliates, employees, or contractors, and you are not offering
kageos as a Restricted Commercial Offering to third-party users.
For example:
- A personal instance reachable from the internet is allowed.
- A company instance on AWS, Azure, GCP, or another cloud is allowed when used
by that company's Affiliates, employees, and contractors.
- A private enterprise instance exposed through SSO, VPN, or a public domain is
allowed when access is limited to that organization, its Affiliates,
employees, and contractors.
- A public form, customer portal, report, dashboard, notification, automation,
API, or support interface is allowed when it is part of your own business
solution and satisfies the Customer-Facing Solution conditions below.
- Selling kageos access, hosted workspaces, managed service access, white-label
packages, OEM packages, embedded products, or competing kageos-like products
to external customers is not allowed under the default BSL grant and requires
commercial authorization.
Consulting, implementation, and support are different from restricted
commercial offerings. A consultant may help a customer deploy, configure,
integrate, train on, or support kageos in the customer's own cloud account,
servers, or private environment, where the customer controls the instance and
the use complies with the customer's own production-use grant.
A consultant, agency, or managed-service provider may not host kageos as its
own commercial managed service for one or more external customers under the
default BSL grant. That requires commercial authorization from the kageos
maintainers.
A vendor may not package kageos as a white-label, OEM, embedded, rebranded, or
on-premises commercial product for third-party production use under the default
BSL grant. That also requires commercial authorization.
## Can I expose forms, pages, APIs, or automation to my customers?
Yes. A company may use kageos to provide a Customer-Facing Solution as part of
its own business. Permitted interactions and outputs include:
- Public or authenticated forms and submissions.
- Application pages, customer or supplier portals, tables, and charts.
- Dashboards, documents, reports, and status pages.
- Notifications, scheduled automations, and workflow results.
- APIs used by your own application.
- Support, assistant, or chat interfaces built for your own customers.
This permission applies only when all of the following are true:
1. External users do not receive general-purpose access to create, install,
develop, or administer kageos workspaces, Service Trees, directories,
agents, applications, users, permissions, or platform configuration.
2. You do not market or brand kageos itself as the product or service being
provided to those external users.
3. The primary value comes from your own goods, services, content, data, or
independently developed solution, rather than providing kageos or
substantially similar platform functionality.
For example, a restaurant may publish a reservation form, a manufacturer may
provide a supplier portal, and a software company may use kageos automations
behind its own product. A vendor may not give customers a renamed kageos
workspace in which they build their own directories and agents without a
commercial license.
## Can I modify the code?
Yes. You can inspect, modify, and create derivative works from the code under
the terms of the BSL 1.1 license.
## Can I redistribute my modified version?
Yes, under the BSL 1.1 terms. Modified copies and derivative works remain under
the same license until the applicable version reaches its Change Date. Keep the
license notice with the code and do not add rights that the BSL does not grant.
Redistribution itself remains available under BSL 1.1, but it does not grant a
recipient broader production-use rights. Supplying kageos, or a modified
version of kageos, as a white-label, OEM, embedded, rebranded, on-premises,
managed, hosted, or competing product for third-party production use requires
commercial authorization for that production use.
## Can I offer kageos as a commercial SaaS, hosted service, or product?
Not under the default BSL grant.
You may not use the kageos core platform to provide a Restricted Commercial
Offering to third parties. That includes commercial SaaS, hosted services,
managed services, white-label products, OEM products, embedded products,
rebranded products, and competing products or services whose main value
substantially overlaps with kageos.
The restriction targets access to the kageos platform and its control surfaces,
not ordinary outputs from a permitted Customer-Facing Solution. Platform
functionality includes workspace and Service Tree management, directory
lifecycle and governance, the agent workbench and scheduled agents,
application build and runtime administration, and user, permission, and audit
administration.
Those uses require commercial authorization from the kageos maintainers.
## Which commercial uses require authorization?
The following uses are not allowed under the default BSL grant and require
commercial authorization from the kageos maintainers:
- Offering kageos as a commercial SaaS, hosted service, paid online workspace,
or managed service for external users.
- Operating kageos as a managed service provider (`MSP`), agency, or consulting
vendor where you host and operate kageos for external customers as your own
paid service.
- Reselling hosted kageos access, seats, accounts, workspaces, or tenant
instances to third parties.
- Offering a white-label, OEM, embedded, rebranded, or on-premises commercial
product where kageos is a core value-driving component provided to external
customers for production use.
- Modifying, forking, rebranding, or removing kageos marks from the code and
then selling substantially similar hosted kageos functionality to third
parties.
- Packaging kageos into a competing product or service whose main value
substantially overlaps with the kageos core platform.
Changing the name, user interface, deployment scripts, or branding does not
remove the BSL restrictions. Modified copies and derivative works remain under
the BSL 1.1 terms until the applicable version reaches its Change Date.
If you want to provide any of the uses above, review
[Commercial Licensing](COMMERCIAL_LICENSE.md) and contact the maintainers before
offering the service.
## Can I build and sell directories, apps, plugins, or integrations?
Yes. Independently developed directories, applications, plugins, integrations,
and other extensions may use the public kageos SDK and public interfaces,
including for commercial purposes, as long as they do not incorporate or derive
from the kageos core platform and do not themselves provide a substantially
similar platform.
The separately published kageos SDK is licensed under Apache License 2.0. A
directory or extension author may choose a separate license for their own work.
## When does a version convert to Apache-2.0?
Each released version converts to Apache License 2.0 three years from that
version's release date, unless that version states a different Change Date.
For this purpose, the release date is the date that version is first made
publicly available from the official kageos repository, normally through an
immutable version tag or release.
After a specific version reaches its Change Date, that version is available
under Apache-2.0. Newer versions may still be under BSL 1.1 until their own
Change Dates.
The maintainers may choose an earlier Change Date for a future version or
specific release if that is better for the project and community.
## Are the SDK, examples, and templates also BSL?
Unless a file, package, or directory has its own license notice, material in
this repository follows the root [LICENSE](LICENSE).
That means SDK reference material, templates, seed examples, and example
capability bundles in this repository are BSL 1.1 by default today and convert
with the repository version after the Change Date.
The project may publish some SDKs, examples, templates, or docs under separate
permissive licenses such as Apache-2.0 or MIT. When that happens, the license
file or header in that specific package controls.
## Can I use the kageos name or logo?
Not automatically. The BSL license does not grant trademark or logo rights.
Ask the maintainers before using kageos branding in a product, service, or
public distribution.
## What should I call this project publicly?
Use:
- "source-available"
- "self-hostable"
- "public source code"
- "BSL 1.1, converts to Apache-2.0 after three years"
Avoid calling the current BSL-licensed core "OSI open source" or "fully open
source". It is not.