Licensing
All Terrene Foundation output is published under open licenses. This page is the definitive reference.
License table
Section titled “License table”| What | License | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| CARE specification | CC BY 4.0 | Terrene Foundation |
| EATP specification | CC BY 4.0 | Terrene Foundation |
| CO specification | CC BY 4.0 | Terrene Foundation |
| Kailash Python SDK | Apache 2.0 | Terrene Foundation |
| CARE Platform | Apache 2.0 | Terrene Foundation |
| EATP SDK | Apache 2.0 | Terrene Foundation |
| Praxis | Apache 2.0 | Terrene Foundation |
| Constitution | Public document (filed with ACRA) | Terrene Foundation |
What this means
Section titled “What this means”Specifications (CC BY 4.0)
Section titled “Specifications (CC BY 4.0)”The CARE, EATP, and CO specifications are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. You may:
- Share, copy, and redistribute in any medium or format
- Adapt, remix, transform, and build upon the material
- Use for any purpose, including commercial
The only requirement is attribution. CC BY 4.0 was chosen (not CC BY-SA) because ShareAlike would prevent proprietary implementations. The Foundation explicitly intends for commercial products to be built on its specifications.
Software (Apache 2.0)
Section titled “Software (Apache 2.0)”All Foundation software is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. You may:
- Use the software for any purpose
- Modify and distribute modified versions
- Use in proprietary products
- Sublicense
Apache 2.0 includes an explicit patent grant (Section 3), providing users with a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free patent license for the covered code.
Patent
Section titled “Patent”PCT/SG2024/050503. Favorable International Preliminary Report on Patentability, all 18 claims. The patent includes an automatic Apache 2.0 Section 3 patent grant: every user of the licensed code receives a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free patent license. The patent exists to protect the community from extractors, not to extract from the community.
An additional national phase patent (P251088SG) is in process.
IP ownership
Section titled “IP ownership”All intellectual property is fully and irrevocably transferred to the Terrene Foundation upon contribution. This means:
- No contributor retains exclusive rights
- No contributor has special access or structural advantage
- The Foundation owns all IP, governed by the constitution
- Anyone can build commercial products on Foundation standards. That is the intended model
The constitution includes entrenched provisions (Clause 54) preventing:
- Conversion of open-source licenses to proprietary licenses
- Removal of the CC BY 4.0 license from specifications
- Removal of the Apache 2.0 license from software
- Capture of IP by any single contributor
License stability
Section titled “License stability”The Foundation’s first principles include license stability as an entrenched constraint: once released under a license, that version remains under that license forever. Future versions may use different licenses. Contributors can rely on the terms that existed when they contributed.
Questions
Section titled “Questions”For licensing questions, contact jack@terrene.foundation.