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License explainer — what Apache 2.0 + Commons Clause means for you

Exocortex is licensed under Apache License 2.0 with the Commons Clause applied. The full legal text is in LICENSE. This page is a plain-language guide — it is not legal advice, but it should answer 95% of "can I do X?" questions.

The short version: you can use Exocortex for almost anything except turning Exocortex itself into a product you sell.

What you can do

  • ✅ Run it personally for your own knowledge work, learning, research.
  • ✅ Modify it. Fork the repo, change the code, deploy your fork on your own infrastructure. Keep your changes private if you want.
  • ✅ Contribute back. Open PRs, file issues, write plugins. The Apache 2.0 patent grant protects both you and downstream users.
  • ✅ Build commercial products on top of Exocortex that use it as an internal engine — e.g. a SaaS that uses your Exocortex instance privately to synthesise data for your own customer-facing product. The value your customers pay for must come from your product, not from Exocortex itself.
  • ✅ Use Exocortex internally at a company for employees' knowledge management (free or paid seats inside the company is fine — you're not selling Exocortex to those employees).
  • ✅ Use Exocortex in paid consulting work where the deliverable is your client's knowledge artefacts (briefs, syntheses, dashboards generated from their own data). You are charging for your domain expertise and the artefacts, not for Exocortex.
  • ✅ Sublicense your modifications to other open-source code under Apache 2.0, including the Commons Clause condition.

What you cannot do

  • ❌ Sell Exocortex itself. You cannot offer Exocortex (or a rebranded fork of it) as a paid product — boxed software, downloadable binaries, mobile app, anything where the buyer is paying for Exocortex.
  • ❌ Run Exocortex as a paid SaaS where the value your customers pay for is, "entirely or substantially", the functionality of Exocortex itself. Hosted-Exocortex-as-a-service is the textbook case the Commons Clause exists to prevent.
  • ❌ Sell support / consulting where Exocortex is the product. Paid "Exocortex consultancy" — implementations, training courses, certifications, "Exocortex experts for hire" — falls under the Commons Clause's definition of "Sell". (Internal employer-paid use is fine; see "What you can do" above.)
  • ❌ Sell hosting where Exocortex is the headline feature. A generic VPS that happens to come with Exocortex pre-installed is fine; a "managed Exocortex hosting" service is not.

Why this license?

Exocortex is built by one person on weekends. Apache 2.0 alone makes that effort easy to fork-and-resell, which would create an asymmetric incentive: anyone with capital could outpace the original maintainer in market reach without contributing back. The Commons Clause keeps the project genuinely open for users and contributors while reserving commercialisation of the engine itself for the maintainer.

If your use case is unclear or you want to negotiate a separate commercial license — open an issue or email the maintainer.