Governance & License Commitment
If you are evaluating Erupt for a long-lived internal system, this page answers the question you should be asking: could this framework suddenly change its license in a few years and force us to pay or migrate?
It cannot, and the commitment is written down in the main repository: .github/GOVERNANCE.md. This page explains it.
License commitment
The open-source Erupt framework — including but not limited to erupt-core, erupt-annotation, erupt-jpa, erupt-mongodb, erupt-upms, erupt-security, erupt-web, erupt-ai, erupt-ai-claw, erupt-cloud, erupt-job, erupt-monitor, erupt-generator, erupt-magic-api, erupt-notice, erupt-print, erupt-terminal, erupt-websocket, erupt-toolkit, erupt-tpl, erupt-excel, and all current and future modules in the erupts/erupt repository — is and will always remain licensed under the Apache License 2.0.
Four commitments:
| Commitment | What it means |
|---|---|
| No relicensing | No move to BSL, SSPL, Commons Clause, Elastic License 2.0, or any other non-OSI-approved license |
| No retroactive changes | Code that is Apache 2.0 today stays Apache 2.0; future contributions to the open-source repository are accepted under Apache 2.0 |
| Independent evolution | Commercial extension modules (erupt-flow, erupt-tenant, erupt-cube) are maintained in separate private repositories and do not affect the licensing, roadmap, or feature set of the open-source core |
| Open source first | Bug fixes, performance improvements, and general-purpose features default to the open-source core. Only clearly enterprise-grade, advanced-scenario features (multi-tenant infrastructure, semantic-layer BI, workflow engines) ship as commercial modules |
What this means in practice
No project-count limits · no commercial restrictions · no license file · no crippled features. Apache 2.0 legally guarantees your freedom to use, modify, and redistribute forever — independent of any future direction the project or its maintainer may take.
Open-source core vs commercial modules
The boundary is drawn by repository, not by feature flags:
| Open-source core | Commercial modules | |
|---|---|---|
| Repository | Public erupts/erupt | Separate private repositories |
| License | Apache 2.0, forever | Commercial license |
| Scope | Annotation engine, UPMS, data connectors, AI, reporting, cloud — all 50+ modules | Multi-tenancy, semantic-layer BI, workflow engine |
| Affects the other? | No | No |
In other words, the open-source core is never weakened to make room for a commercial module. The test for which side a feature belongs to is "is it exclusive to enterprise-grade complex scenarios", not "is it valuable".
Decision-making
- The project is maintained by YuePeng and contributors;
- Routine maintenance, bug fixes, and feature implementation are decided by the maintainer;
- Larger architectural changes are discussed in GitHub Discussions before implementation;
- Anyone can propose a feature, report a bug, or submit a pull request — see the contributing guide.
Data boundary
Governance is not only a licensing question, it is a data question. The one place Erupt initiates an outbound network request is anonymous telemetry; what it collects, how to disable it, and how to self-host it are fully documented on the Anonymous Telemetry page.
Beyond that, Erupt performs no network-based license validation of any kind — no license server, no activation key, and it runs fine fully offline.
Contact
- GitHub: @erupts
- Email: [email protected]
- Discussions: GitHub Discussions
See also
Contributors
YuePeng
Claude Opus 5 (1M context)