Licensing
How Neksur is licensed, what each license permits, and how the editions fit together.
For the product-side view of editions (what each tier does), see Concepts: Editions and tiers. This page covers the legal/licensing facts.
The model in one sentence
Section titled “The model in one sentence”Neksur ships as a single binary built from an open Core (Business Source License 1.1, converting to Apache 2.0 on 2030-05-10) plus private commercial modules, with capabilities unlocked at runtime by a signed license file.
License summary
Section titled “License summary”| Component | Repository | License | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neksur Core | neksur-com/neksur | BSL 1.1 → Apache 2.0 (2030-05-10) | Full source readable today. The BSL grant permits use for non-competing production workloads; converts to Apache 2.0 on the change date. |
| Spark policy library | neksur-com/neksur-spark-policy | BSL 1.1 → Apache 2.0 (2030-05-10) | The Defense-in-Depth writer-side enforcement library for Spark. |
| Commercial module | neksur-com/neksur-commercial (private) | Neksur Commercial License | Multi-Engine + Defense-in-Depth coordination. Source-available to licensed customers; not in the public BSL repo. |
| Enterprise module | neksur-com/neksur-enterprise (private) | Neksur Enterprise License | Enterprise multi-engine coordination. Requires a commercial license underneath it. |
| Documentation | neksur-com/docs (this repo) | Apache 2.0 | Permissive — read, copy, modify, redistribute (commercial OK) as long as the notice is preserved. |
The four product tiers
Section titled “The four product tiers”The tiers are additive — each includes everything below it. Only Core is BSL; the three commercial tiers are unlocked by license.
| Tier | License | Capability summary |
|---|---|---|
| Core | 🟢 BSL | Catalog-level enforcement, CEL policy engine, metadata graph, lineage, semantic layer, contract lifecycle, regex detection, REST/GraphQL/MCP/SQL-proxy. |
| Multi-Engine | 🔵 Commercial | Identical enforcement across Spark + Trino + ≥1 of Snowflake/Dremio/Flink, plus continuous cross-engine verification. |
| Defense-in-Depth | 🔵 Commercial | Writer-side pre-write transforms, continuous compliance scanning, compute-isolation credential vending. |
| Intelligence | 🔵 Commercial | ML classification, anomaly detection, AI-agent observability. |
See Editions and tiers for what each tier contains in detail.
The Business Source License (BSL 1.1)
Section titled “The Business Source License (BSL 1.1)”The BSL is source-available, not open-source — until the change date, when it becomes fully open under Apache 2.0.
- You can read all of the Core source today, run it in production for your own non-competing workloads, modify it, and self-host it.
- You cannot offer Neksur Core itself as a competing hosted/managed service (the Additional Use Grant blocks hyperscaler-style hosting of the product).
- Change date: 2030-05-10. On that date, the then-current Core converts to Apache 2.0. Because of the one-way ratchet, the Core that converts is a strictly growing surface — components only ever move from Commercial into Core, never out.
The change date applies only to the public neksur-com/neksur (and neksur-spark-policy) repositories. Commercial and Enterprise modules stay closed unless an explicit decision ratchets a component into Core.
The signed license file
Section titled “The signed license file”Commercial tiers are unlocked by a signed license file that the binary verifies at startup, gating feature flags. There is no separate enterprise build — the same artifact runs Core or any commercial tier depending on the license it loads. Air-gapped deployments use an offline signed license; no license server callout is required.
Planned content
Section titled “Planned content”- BSL FAQ — worked examples of “non-competing use” (consulting, internal deployments, embedded use, hosted services), and change-date mechanics.
- Commercial tier pricing — how each tier is priced and when each makes sense.
- Design partner program — early-access terms.
- Trademark policy — using the Neksur name and marks.
Contact
Section titled “Contact”- General licensing questions:
hello@neksur.com - Commercial / Enterprise inquiries:
hello@neksur.com