Why ELv2
and not OSI?

ELv2 is a source-available license created by Elastic (the company behind Elasticsearch). The full text is at elastic.co/licensing/elastic-license. You can read the lynox source, modify it, run it for your own business or for your customers as part of a broader product, fork it, and embed it in commercial software. The one restriction (verbatim from the license): you may not provide the software to third parties as a hosted or managed service where the service provides users with access to any substantial set of the software's features.

We considered all three. Apache and MIT would let a hyperscaler take lynox, wrap it in their own managed offering, and out-distribute the project that built it (this is exactly what happened to MongoDB, Elastic, Redis). AGPL would technically prevent that but the SaaS-loophole is well-known and many companies refuse to touch AGPL code at all. ELv2 keeps the source readable, modifiable, and self-hostable for legitimate users while blocking only the one commercial scenario that would kill the project.

Yes — that's the primary use case. Run npx @lynox-ai/core, drop it on your VPS, run it in a Docker container, embed it in a larger product. As long as you're not reselling lynox as-a-service to third parties, you're in scope.

Yes. Fork it on GitHub, patch what you need, deploy your fork. The only ELv2 ask: you can't remove or alter our license notices, and the SaaS-resale restriction carries forward.

Yes. Running lynox for your clients is fine — that's a service-business use case, not the prohibited "hosted or managed service" where users get access to lynox as the product. The line ELv2 draws is at offering lynox itself as a hosted service; selling agency hours that happen to use lynox under the hood is the same as a consultant using Postgres.

Because the OSI (Open Source Initiative) reserves the term "open source" for licenses that meet their 10-point definition — and ELv2 fails one of those points (restriction on commercial use). Calling lynox "open source" would be technically inaccurate, so we use "open-core" or "source-available". The vibe is identical for 99% of users; the label is honest about the 1%.

Your already-deployed engine keeps running — ELv2 doesn't revoke. The source you've checked out is yours to maintain or fork. We commit to a 12-month deprecation runway if we ever pivot, and the GitHub history is permanent. That's the fork-rights guarantee.