LICENSE — BUSINESS SOURCE LICENSE 1.1

Source-available today. Apache 2.0 on May 14, 2029.

Wardenclyffe Engine is licensed under the Business Source License 1.1 (the MariaDB-authored license used by Sentry, MariaDB itself, CockroachDB before its v23 change, and others). We added a generous Additional Use Grant for small operators — free to the receiver, not to the meter.

Free, no contract

Under $1M annual GMV

Run the engine in production for any storefront you own, as long as that store's annual gross merchandise value stays under one million US dollars. No paperwork. No phone home. No usage telemetry.

Commercial license

Above $1M GMV, or for hosting

Above the threshold, or if you want to operate Wardenclyffe as a multi-tenant hosted service that competes with our hosted plans, you need a commercial license. Email licensing@projectthunder.com.

Apache 2.0 on May 14, 2029

Permissive in four years

On the Change Date the license converts automatically to Apache 2.0 for every release shipped before that date. The community gets a hard guarantee that the engine can't be locked away. We get a four-year commercial window per release. That's the BSL bargain.

What you can do, freely

Read, modify, and redistribute the source.
Run the engine for non-production purposes (development, evaluation, education, internal testing).
Run the engine in production for any storefront you own and operate, as long as that deployment's annual GMV stays under $1,000,000 USD.
Operate a single-tenant deployment on a customer's behalf as part of a professional-services engagement. That's not a competing hosted service.

What you need a commercial license for

Operating a Wardenclyffe-backed storefront whose annual GMV exceeds $1M.
Operating a multi-tenant hosted service (a "Competing Wardenclyffe Service") that resells the engine to third parties.
Using the Wardenclyffe AI Engine trademark, the Wardenclyffe logo, or any "Powered by Wardenclyffe" badge — those are reserved by separate brand-usage policy regardless of license tier.

Why BSL, not pure open source

BSL is source-available, not OSI open source — its non-compete clause technically disqualifies it from the OSI definition. We chose it because it's the only license shape that lets us simultaneously:

Publish the entire source on GitHub from day one.
Let small operators run it for real, in production, without a contract.
Prevent a well-funded competitor from running our binaries as a hosted service before our own hosted plans even ship.
Guarantee the community an automatic permissive conversion — Apache 2.0 in May 2029, for every release published before that date.

Sentry's FSL is a sibling pattern; we picked vanilla BSL 1.1 instead because it's older, court-tested, and well understood. The shape is the same: time-bombed source-available with a Change License guarantee.

Full text

The canonical license file lives in the engine repository at LICENSE. Below is the parameter block — the part most people actually need to read.

Business Source License 1.1

Parameters

Licensor:             ProjectThunder.com Inc.

Licensed Work:        Wardenclyffe Engine
                      The Licensed Work is (c) 2026 ProjectThunder.com Inc.

Additional Use Grant: You may make production use of the Licensed Work
                      to operate ecommerce storefronts you yourself
                      own and operate, provided that:

                        (a) the annual gross merchandise value (GMV)
                            processed by each such deployment does not
                            exceed one million United States dollars
                            ($1,000,000 USD); and

                        (b) you do not offer the Licensed Work, or any
                            derivative or hosted version thereof, to
                            third parties as a commercial service that
                            competes with hosted offerings provided by
                            the Licensor (a "Competing Wardenclyffe
                            Service"). Operating a single-tenant
                            deployment on a customer's behalf as part
                            of a professional-services engagement does
                            not constitute a Competing Wardenclyffe
                            Service.

                      Above the GMV threshold, or for any Competing
                      Wardenclyffe Service, a commercial license from
                      the Licensor is required. Contact
                      licensing@projectthunder.com.

                      "Wardenclyffe AI Engine" is a trademark of
                      ProjectThunder.com Inc.; the Wardenclyffe logo
                      and any "Powered by Wardenclyffe" badge are
                      reserved by separate brand-usage policy
                      (see docs/brand-usage.md) and their use is not
                      granted by this license.

Change Date:          May 14, 2029

Change License:       Apache License, Version 2.0