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Reference·2 min read

Licensing — BSL 1.1, and what you can do with it

Self-host it forever, free. Fork it, modify it, redistribute it. Just don't sell it as a hosted competitor to us.

Licensing

The repo is licensed under Business Source License 1.1 (BSL 1.1), with an automatic conversion to Apache 2.0 on 2030-08-03.

The full text is in LICENSE. Below is the plain-English version — this is a summary, not legal advice.

What you can do

  • Self-host it internally to run your own business, forever, for free. This includes commercial internal use.
  • Read, modify, fork, and redistribute the source code.
  • Deploy modifications to your own infrastructure without upstreaming them.
  • Use it in production — there is no "for evaluation only" restriction.

What you can't do (yet)

  • Offer it as a hosted or managed SaaS to third parties that competes with Pypes LLC's hosted version. That requires a commercial license — email commercial@pypes.dev.

That single restriction is the only difference between BSL 1.1 and a permissive OSS license. The "compete with the hosted version" test is deliberately narrow — running it for your own business is fine, running it for a client under a service agreement is fine, embedding pieces of it in a larger internally-facing tool is fine.

The conversion date

On 2030-08-03, or four years after each release (whichever is later), the license auto-converts to Apache 2.0. From that point on, every restriction above disappears — you can run a hosted competitor if you want. This isn't a marketing clause; it's baked into the LICENSE file.

The rationale: BSL keeps the runway alive during the commercial-viability window; the conversion clock keeps it honest as an open-source project long-term.

The commercial boundary

Pypes LLC operates a commercial hosted equity-platform. That hosted product is not covered by this repository — it's a separate offering with different code, different infra, and different licensing.

The split is documented at COMMERCIAL_BOUNDARY.md in the repo. Read that if you're planning anything commercially adjacent.

Contributions

Contributions to the upstream repo are accepted under BSL 1.1 (with the same 2030 conversion). By opening a PR, you're agreeing to license your contribution under those terms. See Contributing.

Not legal advice

Everything above is a summary. The actual license text in LICENSE controls. If you have a specific legal question — especially "can I do X with this?" — talk to your lawyer, not to us. Or email commercial@pypes.dev and we'll route it appropriately.