Open where it builds trust. A service where it earns its keep.
You should be able to read the software that sits between your code and the internet. Here is exactly what’s open, what’s source-available, what’s a service, and the one promise that makes the whole arrangement safe to build on.
The licensing boundary, in three bands. Illustrative.
The boundary
| Layer | License | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Wire protocol, provider and runtime adapters, OS platform layer, the VS Code extension | Apache-2.0 | Use, fork, embed, audit. The adapters are the code that touches your API keys, which is exactly the code that should be readable. Community adapters welcome, in any language. |
| The eval harness | Apache-2.0 | Every benchmark number we publish can be re-run against our own harness. A benchmark nobody can reproduce is a press release. |
| Daemon core: Ledger, static-rules Router, model catalog, Project Brain, verification, agent, CLI, dashboard | FSL (source-available) | Read it, audit it, self-host it, use it commercially. Each release converts to Apache-2.0 automatically on the second anniversary of its own publication. |
| Learned routing service, personalization, model recommendations | Service | The subscription. Retrained on measured outcomes; new models evaluated within days. |
| Team & enterprise layer | Commercial | Budgets, shared dashboards, and the rest of the organizational layer, as it ships. |
Why FSL and not something scarier
The threat we license against is specific: a funded competitor or cloud selling our own code back against us. FSL blocks exactly that for two years per release and nothing else: the code stays readable and self-hostable the whole time, then becomes Apache-2.0 on schedule. A fork of the public build compiles, runs, and routes on static rules forever. What it never gets is the routing service, because that isn’t in any repository; it’s a stream of decisions retrained on measured outcomes.
The pledge
The licensing never moves in a more restrictive direction. Ever.
We’ve watched how the community reacts when that promise is broken elsewhere, and we’d rather write it down now and be held to it.
Contributing
- Adapters and integrations: PRs welcome on the Apache side.
- Benchmark reproductions: the methodology is versioned; file issues against it.
- Trademark note: the code is licensed; the name and the benchmark-report brand are not.