Licensing

Cognipeer Console is published in this repository under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0.

That choice is intentional:

• It keeps the community edition genuinely open and auditable.
• It allows commercial use, paid support, and hosted offerings by Cognipeer.
• It requires users who modify the software and make it available over a network to share those modifications under the same license.

What AGPL Means In Practice

You may:

• run Cognipeer Console for internal or commercial purposes,
• charge for hosting, support, integration, migration, or consulting,
• modify the codebase for your own deployments,
• redistribute the original or modified project under AGPL terms.

You must:

• keep copyright and license notices intact,
• provide source code for AGPL-covered modifications when you distribute the software,
• provide source code for AGPL-covered modifications when you offer the modified service over a network,
• preserve the same AGPL terms for downstream recipients of the community edition.

Commercial Options

Cognipeer may offer separate commercial terms for teams that need one or more of the following:

• closed-source redistribution,
• proprietary OEM or embedded use,
• managed SaaS terms outside AGPL reciprocity,
• contractual support, SLA, onboarding, or enterprise deployment assistance.

See COMMERCIAL.md for the repository-level summary.

Hosted Service Versus Community Edition

This repository documents the community edition source tree. Managed or enterprise offerings can differ in:

• hosting and operational responsibilities,
• support commitments,
• pricing and contractual terms,
• access to private deployment automation or enterprise-only deliverables.

Trademarks

The AGPL license covers source code. It does not automatically grant trademark rights to use the Cognipeer name, logos, or branding for derivative hosted services or redistributed products.

If you redistribute or operate a derivative, keep branding and trademark usage aligned with the terms communicated by Cognipeer.

Choosing This Model

If your goal is to:

• publish the code publicly on GitHub,
• accept outside contributions,
• keep community modifications open,
• and still sell support, hosting, or commercial licenses,

AGPL is a defensible default.

Legal Note

This page is an engineering-facing summary, not legal advice. If you are making a redistribution, SaaS, OEM, or procurement decision, have counsel review the full LICENSE.