Bosque is source-available under the Elastic License 2.0.

Bosque is source-available under the Elastic License 2.0 (ELv2). This guide explains how we read that license for Bosque, with concrete examples, so you can tell what you can do and what you can't, and what happens if a line is crossed.

How the pieces fit together:

This guide does not change the license. It states how the licensor reads it and how it intends to enforce it. If this guide and the license text ever disagree, the license text controls.

The rule that matters

ELv2 lets you use, copy, modify, and distribute Bosque for almost any purpose, including commercial ones, with these limits. The first is the one that matters most:

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 features or functionality of the software.

Ask three questions:

1. Who is using it? People inside your organization, or third parties?
2. Who is running it? Are you operating it for others?
3. What can they reach? A substantial set of the product, or a narrow slice?

If the answer is "third parties, operated by you, with real access to the product", it is a hosted or managed service, and you need a commercial license.

Charging is not part of the test. Giving third parties free access, a free trial, or a freemium tier is still providing a hosted service.

What you can do

• Run Bosque for your own organization. Employees, contractors working for you, and your affiliates can all use it. Your organization includes the companies you control, are controlled by, or share control with (ELv2 defines "your company" this way).
• Use it commercially. A company can use Bosque to plan its own products, serve its own customers, and run its own business.
• Modify it and extend it. Add features, connect it to your own systems, change how it looks, and build internal tools around it. You don't have to publish your changes.
• Use the customer-facing parts of Bosque. The public feedback portal, shared roadmap links, shared Knowledge Base pages, and customer-visible plan links are part of Bosque's job. Your customers and partners viewing them or submitting feedback is not a hosted service, because they reach a narrow slice, not a substantial set of features.
• Run staging, test, backup, and disaster-recovery copies of your own install.
• Host it on a cloud provider. Running it on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or similar is fine. You are the one using it, and the provider is your supplier.
• Hire help. A consultant or agency can install and configure Bosque on your infrastructure and accounts, and hand it over. A contractor can operate your instance for you when the accounts, the data, and the instance belong to you and the contractor acts on your behalf.
• Sell services around Bosque. Consulting, training, implementation, support, and custom development for people who run their own Bosque are fine.
• Fork it publicly, within limits. You may distribute copies and modified versions under the same license, with the notices kept, modifications marked, and the name changed. See Distributing a modified version.
• Use it for research, education, and personal projects.

What self-hosting makes you responsible for

Self-hosting means you—not the licensor—select, deploy, configure, secure, monitor, maintain, update, back up, and operate the software and the accounts, infrastructure, integrations, and data connected to it. You are responsible for:

• deciding whether Bosque is suitable for your use and testing it before production use
• identity and access management, network and application security, secrets, patches, monitoring, incident response, business continuity, backups, restores, and data deletion
• the legality of your content and processing, privacy notices and consents, data-subject requests, retention, data residency, accessibility, industry rules, and other compliance obligations
• all provider accounts, fees, quotas, availability, terms, settings, and data handling, including Convex, Clerk, OpenAI, and any optional integration
• reviewing and testing your modifications, dependencies, upgrades, migrations, and integrations

The software, releases, examples, and documentation are provided as is. Unless we sign a separate agreement that expressly says otherwise, we have no obligation to provide support, maintenance, updates, upgrades, security fixes, monitoring, migration help, compatibility, availability, or any response or remediation time. We may change, discontinue, delay, or decline any release, documentation, assistance, or self-hosting access. Community discussion or an informal answer does not create a warranty or support commitment.

The hosted Service's Terms, DPA, security measures, backups, support channel, and other hosted commitments do not apply to your install. In ordinary self-hosted operation, you contract directly with your providers and act as the party responsible for the data in the install. The No Liability section of the Elastic License 2.0 controls; this section explains the practical allocation of responsibility and does not narrow that disclaimer.

What you can't do

• Run "Bosque as a service" for others. Operating Bosque or a fork and giving customers accounts, whether paid, free, or a trial.
• Host it for clients. A managed-hosting arrangement where you run an instance and your clients log in to it.
• White-label or rebrand it and offer it to others.
• Resell access or subscriptions, or list it on a cloud or app marketplace as a deployable or hosted product.
• Build it into your own product so that your customers get a substantial part of Bosque's functionality, such as a "product management module" inside your SaaS.
• Operate a multi-tenant platform on Bosque for organizations you don't control.
• Remove or hide license, copyright, or other notices, or move, disable, or get around license-key functionality if a version includes it.
• Use our name, logo, or artwork to name or promote your own product or service. See the trademark policy.
• Split the product up to avoid the rule. Offering Bosque's functionality to third parties in pieces so that together they add up to a substantial set is treated as one service.

Gray areas: ask us first

These depend on the details. You may email hello@bosque.cc before you start. We do not guarantee that we will review or approve a proposed use on any timeline, and silence is not permission.

• Hosting a pilot or demo for a prospective customer or partner.
• Providing access to a franchise, joint venture, or related company that you don't control.
• A university, nonprofit, or accelerator giving access to its members or portfolio.
• A managed-services provider operating an instance on a client's behalf where the accounts, data, and contract are less clearly the client's.
• Products that use Bosque as a back end through its agent (MCP) access to deliver a service to others.

Permission is effective only when we give it expressly in writing.

"A substantial set of the features"

We read this to mean the core product workflows: planning (backlog, roadmap, prioritization), customer feedback, research, the Knowledge Library and Knowledge Base, and the AI assistant. It means access to the product, as opposed to isolated outputs.

• A link to a public roadmap, a feedback form, an exported document, or a single AI answer is a narrow slice.
• Accounts that let someone create and manage backlog items, research, or library content is a substantial set.

We look at what a person can accomplish, not at how many screens they can open.

Distributing a modified version

ELv2 allows you to distribute Bosque, including modified versions, as long as you:

1. Give every recipient a copy of the license, which also binds them to the hosting restriction.
2. Keep the license, copyright, and other notices in the code, including LICENSE and NOTICE.
3. Mark modified files with a prominent notice that you changed them.

And, under the trademark policy, you must also:

1. Give your version a different name, and remove the Bosque logo and brand artwork.
2. You may say that it is "based on Bosque" in plain text.

License keys

A future version may include license-key functionality, for example to unlock features that depend on our own infrastructure. If it does, ELv2 forbids moving, changing, disabling, or getting around it, and removing or hiding functionality it protects.

Code you already hold under ELv2 stays licensed to you under ELv2. We can't change that after the fact.

Versions and relicensing

Each release is licensed under the terms it shipped with. We may license future releases differently, and we may offer the same code under other terms, such as a commercial license. Contributors agree to this in the contributor agreement, which is what makes it possible.

Violations and enforcement

Under ELv2, your licenses end automatically if you use Bosque in violation of its terms. If we notify you and you fully stop within 30 days, they're reinstated retroactively. If you violate the terms again after that, they end permanently.

In practice:

1. We reach out. Most problems are misunderstandings, and we try to resolve them directly.
2. You fix it within 30 days, or get a commercial license that covers what you're doing.
3. If it continues, we reserve every remedy available to us. That includes asking hosting providers, marketplaces, and registrars to remove infringing offerings, demanding that use stops, and seeking damages, injunctive relief, and our costs through the courts.

Seeing a problem? Tell us at hello@bosque.cc with the subject "License concern". Please include the URL or description and anything that shows who runs it.

FAQ

Is Bosque open source? Not in the strict sense. The Open Source Initiative's definition doesn't allow limits on offering software as a service. Bosque is source-available: you can read, run, and change it, and self-hosting is free.

Can our customers log in to our Bosque instance? Not to use the product. They can use the customer-facing features you choose to expose, such as the feedback portal and shared roadmaps. Giving customers accounts to work in Bosque itself makes it a hosted service for them.

We are a software company. Can we use Bosque internally? Yes. Using it to run your own product organization is exactly what the license is for.

Can we run it for a sister company? If you control it, or it is under common control with you, yes. Otherwise ask us first.

Do I have to share my changes? No. Sharing is welcome and optional. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Can a cloud marketplace list Bosque? Not without a commercial license.

Does rewriting the code with AI tools get around the license? No. If your version is based on copying or closely following our code, it is a derivative work and the license applies. Copyright protects the code, not the idea, so an independent implementation that doesn't copy our code isn't covered by this license. It also can't use our name or artwork.

What about patents? ELv2 gives you a license under any patents we hold that cover the software, for the uses the license allows. That patent license ends for you if you or your company make a written claim that the software infringes a patent.

Does the license cover Convex, Clerk, OpenAI, and the other services Bosque connects to? No. They have their own terms. See self-hosting and THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

Does the license cover my data? Your data stays yours. The license covers the software only.

Commercial licenses

You need one if you want to host Bosque for others, resell it, white-label it, embed it in a product, or list it on a marketplace. We're open to reseller, hosting-partner, and OEM arrangements. A template agreement shows the typical shape.

Email hello@bosque.cc with the subject "Commercial license" and tell us what you want to do, who it's for, and roughly how many users.

Legal status

This guide is not legal advice. It describes how the licensor interprets and intends to enforce the Elastic License 2.0 for Bosque. If you're unsure whether your use is allowed, ask us, or ask your own lawyer.