# Licence

> What you may and may not do with node-flow, in plain language.

Source: https://node-flow.dev/docs/guide/licence

node-flow is **source available**, not open source. The distinction is not
pedantry — it changes what you are allowed to do, and the terms below are not
the ones an OSI licence would give you.

The licence itself is
[`LICENSE`](https://github.com/dsardar099/node-flow/blob/main/LICENSE) in the
repository. This
page explains it. Where the two differ, the licence governs.

## At a glance

|                                                                |   |
| -------------------------------------------------------------- | - |
| Read the source                                                | ✅ |
| Download and copy it                                           | ✅ |
| Run it for any purpose, including commercially                 | ✅ |
| Ship it inside a product you sell, unmodified                  | ✅ |
| Redistribute it unmodified — npm, containers, internal mirrors | ✅ |
| Patch your own deployment, never redistributed                 | ✅ |
| Fork it to open a pull request                                 | ✅ |
| Publish a fork as a separate project                           | ❌ |
| Distribute a modified version                                  | ❌ |
| Sell a modified version                                        | ❌ |

## What this means in practice

### You do not need a commercial licence to use it

Running node-flow in production, for a business, inside a product you charge
for, or on behalf of your customers, is covered. There is no seat count, no
revenue threshold and no "contact us" gate on ordinary use.

This is the main way the licence differs from the non-commercial
source-available licences it otherwise resembles.

### Installing it is redistribution, and that is fine

Pulling `@node-flow-dev/sdk` from npm, pulling a container image, or mirroring
either into your own registry, all involve copying the software. Redistributing
it **unmodified and in full** is expressly allowed, so none of that needs
special permission.

### You may patch your own deployment

If a dependency has a vulnerability, a log line is too noisy, or something is
broken at 3am, you may change your copy and run it.

What you may not do is let that change leave your organisation — no publishing
it, no shipping it to customers as a modified build, no offering it as a service
distinguishable from the unmodified software.

<Callout type="warn">
  This is not a licence to maintain a private variant indefinitely. A patch you
  keep and build upon becomes, in substance, the fork the licence prohibits.
  Send it back instead — see below.
</Callout>

### Contributing is expressly allowed, forks and all

A pull request requires a fork. The licence permits creating one **solely to
prepare a contribution** to the official repository, and permits modifying it
for that purpose.

That permission is scoped to the act of contributing. It ends when the
contribution is submitted, withdrawn or rejected, and it never covers running
that fork in production, publishing it as an alternative, or keeping it as an
independent line of development.

Contributions are licensed to the project under the terms in section 4 of the
licence. You keep your copyright; the project gets the right to ship what you
wrote.

### What is prohibited

Publishing your own version. Concretely: a fork presented as a separate project,
a modified build distributed to anyone, a modified copy sold or supplied for
value, and removing the copyright or licence notices.

The intent is narrow — improvements to node-flow should come back to node-flow
rather than becoming somebody else's product.

## Configuration is not modification

Workflow definitions, task definitions, environment variables, secrets,
connection strings and every other input you supply are **not** modifications.
Neither is building from unmodified source with the build process the project
ships.

You can therefore configure node-flow as heavily as you like — including
workflows that are themselves proprietary and valuable — without the licence
touching them. Your workflows are yours.

## If you need different terms

Terms beyond these are available by agreement: [node-flow.dev](https://node-flow.dev).

<Callout>
  **This is a bespoke licence.** No court has interpreted it and no legal team
  already knows what it means. If your organisation's review process depends on
  recognising a standard licence, raise it with us early rather than late.
</Callout>