Commercial use¶
SYNAPSE CHANNEL is dual-licensed. There is no feature difference between the open-source and the commercial build — the package on PyPI is the full product; a commercial licence changes the terms, not the code.
Which licence do I need?¶
- The free AGPL-3.0 covers open-source, research, internal, and personal work — including use inside a company — as long as you do not expose a closed-source or hosted derivative over a network to third parties.
- A commercial licence is for shipping a closed-source product or a SaaS without the AGPL's network-copyleft obligation; it removes AGPL sections 13 and 5(d) (network-use source disclosure) within the scope of the purchased tier.
Rule of thumb: if anyone outside your organisation can interact with a modified version over a network and you do not publish the corresponding source, you need a commercial licence.
Plans¶
| Plan | For | Grant |
|---|---|---|
| Community — free (AGPL-3.0) | open source, research, personal | the full feature set; copyleft applies |
| Indie — pay-what-you-want, from CHF 9.99 | a solo developer or one closed-source project | copyleft exemption for one product, perpetual for the purchased version line |
| Team | a company shipping closed-source or SaaS | exemption for unlimited projects in one legal entity, with email support |
| Managed / Enterprise | hosted multi-tenant coordination, SLAs, compliance | bespoke terms |
Plans and checkout are at anulum.li/synapse/pricing.html (handled by Polar.sh, CHF). For enterprise, OEM, academic, or non-profit terms, write to protoscience@anulum.li.
The full commercial terms are in
COMMERCIAL-LICENSE.md;
the open-source licence is
AGPL-3.0-or-later.
Evaluation path¶
Use this path before buying or requesting custom terms:
- Decide whether AGPL-3.0 already covers your use. If your product or service is open source under compatible terms, or your use stays private/internal, the Community path is normally the right fit.
- If you will distribute a closed-source product or operate a hosted service without publishing corresponding source, choose the published Indie or Team plan unless your case needs custom terms.
- For enterprise, OEM, academic, non-profit, managed-hosting, procurement, or co-ownership discussions, email protoscience@anulum.li.
Include the legal entity, product or service name, deployment shape (distributed product, internal tool, hosted SaaS, managed service, or embedded component), expected source availability, expected users or seats, support expectations, compliance constraints, and the version line you plan to ship.
This page explains project licensing boundaries; it is not legal advice. If your licensing obligations are material to a release or acquisition, review the AGPL and the commercial terms with your counsel.
Claim hygiene¶
The commercial documentation is checked by:
.venv/bin/python tools/check_commercial_claim_hygiene.py --check
The check keeps the AGPL/commercial boundary visible and fails wording that implies paid code paths absent from the public package. Commercial licensing changes usage terms, not the package contents.