Licensing
Notice
This page summarises our licensing and is not contractual. Only the official English texts of the Apache License 2.0 and the GNU AGPL-3.0 are legally binding. Commercial licences are sold by AWACLOUD to businesses only, on a signed order form; they are governed by AwaCloud's general licence terms and general terms of sale, sent with every order form and on request (sales@awacloud.com). Their French version prevails; an English courtesy translation is provided.
AWA is one codebase under a deliberately tiered licensing model. Here is exactly who pays for what, why, and what stays free forever. No dark patterns: this page sets out our intentions transparently.
The short version
| What | Licence | Costs you |
|---|---|---|
Framework @awacloud/fw, its WASM crypto companion @awacloud/fw-wasm-crypto and their build tools — first release | Apache-2.0 (vendored third-party code keeps its upstream permissive licences) | Free |
Office libraries — second release: @awacloud/pdf and @awacloud/fonts (AWA PDF), @awacloud/ooxml and @awacloud/odf (AWA Office), @awacloud/md (AWA Markdown), @awacloud/oconv, @awacloud/oconv-fonts and @awacloud/tool-convert (AWA Convert, which also includes all the libraries above) | AGPL-3.0-only or commercial | Free under AGPL; paid for proprietary integration — per application, per year |
The office build tool @awacloud/tool-prebuild-generator — second release | Apache-2.0 | Free |
Other packages of the monorepo are not part of these releases; their licence will be stated when they are published.
Why not one single licence?
Because the licence tiers have different jobs:
- The foundation is Apache-2.0 because we want everyone to be able to check our approach. A frontend framework is not meant to be paid for, and we want ours to stay free. The foundation exists to show, in public, that a complete web stack with zero npm dependencies is possible. You can use, modify and redistribute it, under the Apache 2.0 licence, with no time limit.
- The office libraries are, by choice, the paid part of our model. Ours are AGPL: genuinely free for open source and for anyone willing to share their source. To embed them in a proprietary product, you need a commercial licence. That revenue funds everything described on this page.
- Crypto primitives are permissive because cryptographic code only earns trust if it can be audited freely. Apache-2.0, in the same public repository. We never sell the primitives.
FAQ
Is the AGPL a trap?
No — it's a choice, and we state it plainly: the AGPL requires you to offer the source of your application to its users, including over a network. If your product is open source, you'll never pay us anything. If it's proprietary, the commercial licence exists precisely so you don't have to open it. That is the whole model: one codebase, two licences.
What does the commercial licence actually buy?
A licence per application — the trade name you sell or run it under — with unlimited developers, servers and end users (no per-seat, per-server or per-end-user royalties), whether you run it online, install it at your customers' or ship it as desktop software; the right to keep your source closed; support from our team, which corrects reproducible defects in the libraries; and a lasting licence: if you do not renew, you keep running your application with the versions you received, with no time limit, within the terms of the licence, and the licence follows your application if you sell it, on written notice to us (exact terms: general licence terms, articles 9.3 and 17, sent with the order form).
Can I try before buying?
All the code is public. Evaluate under AGPL; buy when you validate a proprietary use.
What happens to my rights if AwaCloud stops trading?
The versions you received remain usable, with no time limit and within the terms of the licence, when you do not renew, and follow your application if you sell it. They carry no licence key and no kill switch: they do not depend on us to run. The whole product is one public, auditable repository with no runtime dependency and a pinned, documented build toolchain; our maintenance policy and changelog are public.
Will licences change over time?
The Apache-2.0 licence is irrevocable by nature, and a version published under AGPL-3.0-only stays so. For the commercial licence, a new version of the general terms only applies from the following renewal, never during a period.
I contributed code — who owns it?
You do. Contributions to the dual-licensed libraries will be accepted under a contributor licence agreement (CLA) that grants us the right to use them in both the AGPL and the commercial editions; the Apache-2.0 packages carry no CLA — their licence is enough. Until the CLA is published and community contributions open, external pull requests are not yet accepted.
What about the third-party code in the crypto package?
Third-party code lives in the vendor/ directory, in source form, under its original permissive licences, with a provenance record for every file. We do not change the licence of other people's work: we document its origin.
Commercial licence: sales@awacloud.com · other questions: contact@awaforge.eu.