Licensing

Secronyx is free and open source under the GNU Affero General Public License v3, an OSI-approved open-source licence. This page summarises what that means for an operator and for a contributor, and quotes the clauses that decide the questions people actually ask. It is a reading guide, not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for the licence text. Where this page and the LICENSE file in the repository differ, the LICENSE file governs.

The three documents

The licence in force

LICENSE is the unmodified AGPL-3.0 text. Copyright in the work is held by Levantar AI (company number 16584071) and by the project's contributors, who keep the copyright in what they write. There is no fee, no term limit, no seat count, no host count and no licence key, and there is no second, better build: every feature in the binary is available to every user.

What you may do freely

• Use it for any purpose, including commercially, inside your business
• Run it on as many hosts as you like, for as long as you like
• Read the source, modify it, and build your own version
• Distribute it, and your modifications, to anyone

Section 2, Basic Permissions, is the clause that puts running the software beyond argument:

This License explicitly affirms your unlimited permission to run the unmodified Program.

You may make, run and propagate covered works that you do not convey, without conditions so long as your license otherwise remains in force.

What the licence asks in return

One thing: reciprocity when you pass modifications on. Section 5, Conveying Modified Source Versions, condition (c):

You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy.

Section 6 then requires that anyone you give a binary to can also get the corresponding source, under the same terms. For a normal software product, that is where the obligation would stop — and section 0 says why it would not reach a hosted service:

To "convey" a work means any kind of propagation that enables other parties to make or receive copies. Mere interaction with a user through a computer network, with no transfer of a copy, is not conveying.

AGPL closes that gap. Section 13, Remote Network Interaction, is the clause that distinguishes AGPL-3.0 from GPL-3.0 and the one to read carefully if you run a service:

Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary means of facilitating copying of software.

Read the trigger precisely: if you modify the Program. An unmodified Secronyx served over the network to anyone, at any scale, does not engage section 13.

The distinction that decides most questions

Nearly every licensing question about Secronyx resolves on one line: the obligation attaches to distributing or network-serving modifications, not to using the software.

"Internal" means internal. Contractors making modifications exclusively for you, under your direction, are inside section 2 and are not a third party you have conveyed to. Your own employees using an internal diagnostics portal built on the agent are not "users interacting with it remotely" in the sense that worries procurement teams — though if you have modified the agent and exposed it beyond your organisation, treat section 13 as engaged and publish.

Does using Secronyx make my own software AGPL?

No — not by querying it. Secronyx runs as a separate process and you talk to it over MCP (stdio) or HTTP. A program that makes calls to a separate program over a documented protocol is not, on the ordinary view, a derivative work of it: no code of Secronyx's is copied into yours, nothing of yours is linked into the Secronyx binary, and the two exchange JSON over a socket or a pipe. Your client, your dashboard, your incident bot and your AI agent stay under whatever licence you choose.

Two honest qualifications, because this is the question people most want a comfortable answer to:

• The AGPL reaches the program, not its conversations, but the boundary is one of law rather than of transport. The safe pattern is the one Secronyx ships: a separate process, spoken to over MCP or HTTP, with no Secronyx source in your tree. If instead you vendor its packages, import github.com/levantar-ai/secronyx/... into your own binary, compile a plugin into it with the build tags, or otherwise ship a single combined work, that is a genuinely different question and the answer is your lawyers', not this page's.
• Distributing Secronyx alongside your software is not the same as combining with it. Section 5's "aggregate" paragraph covers shipping separate, independent works on the same medium — an installer or a container image that contains both. That leaves the other parts of the aggregate under their own terms; it does not license you to withhold the source of a modified Secronyx inside it.

Other clauses worth knowing

• Section 4, Conveying Verbatim Copies. You may charge for distribution and for support. Keep the copyright notices and the licence text intact.
• Section 7, Additional Terms. You may not add restrictions of your own beyond the limited set the section allows.
• Section 8, Termination. A violation terminates your rights automatically, but a first violation notified by a copyright holder is cured if you fix it within 30 days of the notice, and a cessation is permanently reinstated if you are not notified within 60 days of it.
• Section 10, Automatic Licensing of Downstream Recipients. Everyone who receives a copy from you receives their licence from the original licensors, not from you; you may not impose further restrictions on them.
• Section 11, Patents. Contributors grant a patent licence covering their contributions. Starting patent litigation alleging that the Program infringes terminates your rights under section 8.
• Sections 15 and 16, Warranty and Liability. The software is provided as is, without warranty, as far as the law allows. An indemnified agreement is a commercial matter; see below.

The procurement note

AGPL-3.0 is OSI-approved open source, so a policy phrased as "OSI-approved licences only" is satisfied. Some organisations, however, name AGPL specifically on a deny list — usually a blanket rule written to keep network copyleft away from proprietary source, not a judgement about any particular project. If that is your position, note two things before escalating for an exception. First, the rule is normally aimed at code your developers would link into your products; running an unmodified diagnostics agent as a separate process is a materially narrower fact pattern, and saying so is often enough. Second, the commercial licence exists partly for the case where it is not enough, and where an exception would cost more in review time than a licence. Write to licensing@levantar.ai if it would help to have the position stated on paper for your reviewers.

Licence history

Secronyx was developed in a private repository, and v1.0.0 is its first public release. No build has ever been distributed publicly under any other licence, so there is no older copy in circulation carrying different terms. The LICENSE file in the repository is the current and governing licence.

If you somehow hold a copy obtained under different terms and are unsure which apply to it, raise it with licensing@levantar.ai.

When you need a commercial licence

COMMERCIAL-LICENSE.md opens by saying you almost certainly do not need one, and that is accurate for the overwhelming majority of deployments. Using the agent inside your own business, on any number of hosts, to diagnose your own systems, is covered by the free licence and always will be.

You need a separate agreement with Levantar AI (company number 16584071) if you want to:

• embed Secronyx in a closed-source product or appliance that you sell
• run modified versions in a hosted service without publishing those modifications
• redistribute it under terms of your own choosing

The commercial licence removes the reciprocal obligation; it does not buy you a different or better agent. To request one, email sales@levantar.ai with your company name, what you intend to build, expected scale, and the support level you need.

Support is separate from the licence

Enterprise support is sold independently and does not change your licence. You can buy support for the free, open-source agent and remain on AGPL-3.0. What is offered:

• enterprise support contracts and SLAs
• deployment assistance for large fleets
• custom collectors and integrations
• indemnified agreements for regulated buyers

For any other licensing question, write to licensing@levantar.ai. It is cheaper to ask than to find out during a procurement review.

The Contributor License Agreement

You will be asked to sign the CLA before your first pull request is merged. A contribution is not covered by the licence you received the software under — it flows the other way, and the CLA is how that grant is made. CONTRIBUTOR_LICENSE_AGREEMENT.md is an agreement between the contributor ("You") and Levantar AI ("Company") concerning contributions to levantar-ai/secronyx. Its substance:

1. Grant of Copyright License. You grant the Company and its successors a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sublicensable licence to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense and distribute your contributions and derivative works of them, in source and object form, for any purpose including commercial purposes.
2. Patent License. You grant a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in the agreement) patent licence to make, use, sell, offer to sell and otherwise dispose of the contributions.
3. Moral Rights. To the extent permitted by applicable law, you waive any moral rights in your contributions.
4. Representations. You represent that you have the authority to make the agreement; that your contributions are your original work or that you have the right to submit them; and that they do not violate any third-party rights.
5. Miscellaneous. The agreement is governed by the laws of England and Wales.

The document ends with signature, name, email and date fields.

How the three documents relate

   Contributor ──── CLA ────▶ Levantar AI ──── AGPL-3.0 ────▶ Everyone
   grants a broad,            holds the        free to use, modify and
   sublicensable              rights needed    distribute, for any purpose;
   copyright + patent         to license the   modifications you pass on or
   licence, keeps             whole work       serve over a network are
   their own copyright        both ways        published under the same licence
                                   │
                                   └──── separate commercial licence ──▶ Vendors
                                         negotiated, for closed-source
                                         embedding or hosting modified
                                         versions without publishing them

The practical reading: the CLA is what makes the dual arrangement possible. A licensor may offer its own work under whatever terms it likes, but only if it holds the necessary rights in all of it. Because contributors grant the Company a sublicensable licence rather than assigning copyright, the Company can release the combined work under AGPL-3.0 to everyone and, separately, grant a negotiated commercial licence to a vendor who cannot accept the reciprocal obligation. A contributor keeps the copyright in their own work and can continue to use it however they like.

Point 4 is the clause contributors most often need to think about. If you are employed, your employer may own the copyright in code you write, in which case you need the authority the representation claims. Check before you open the pull request rather than after.

Quick answers

Can I run this in my commercial business, in production, on every server? Yes. No fee, no limit, no key, and no obligation of any kind.

Can I modify it? Yes. If you keep the modifications to yourself, nothing further is asked of you. If you give the modified version to anyone, or serve it to users over a network, publish the corresponding source under AGPL-3.0.

Does querying Secronyx from my own application make my application AGPL? No. A separate process spoken to over MCP or HTTP is not a derivative work of your program or yours of it. Compiling Secronyx code into your own binary is a different question — take advice.

Can I put it in a container image and publish that image? Yes. Unmodified, pass on the licence and notices. Modified, publish the corresponding source under the same licence.

Can I build an internal diagnostics portal on it for my own company? Yes, modified or not. Internal use conveys nothing to anyone.

Can I sell a closed-source appliance with it inside? Not under AGPL-3.0, unless you publish the source of the Secronyx part under AGPL-3.0. Otherwise contact sales@levantar.ai.

Can I offer it to my managed-service customers as part of a service I charge for? Yes. Unmodified, AGPL asks nothing. If you have modified it, section 13 asks you to offer those users your modified source — or take a commercial licence instead.

Does buying support change my licence? No. They are independent.

Is there a free tier and a paid tier of the agent? No. There is one agent with every feature enabled.

Related pages

Contributing · Releases and versioning · Reporting a vulnerability · Compliance mapping · Compared with alternatives · Documentation home