Forge is preparing the requested surface and verifying the live route.
Forge is preparing the requested surface and verifying the live route.
Understanding the Business Source License and what it means for Optima Forge users.
The Business Source License (BSL) 1.1 is a source-available license created by MariaDB Corporation. It is used by many leading infrastructure companies, including CockroachDB, Sentry, HashiCorp, and now Optima Forge. BSL provides a middle ground between fully proprietary software and traditional open source licenses.
Under BSL 1.1, the source code is fully available for reading, auditing, learning, and non-production use. Production use requires a valid commercial license (in the form of an Optima Forge subscription). After a defined change date, the code automatically converts to a permissive open source license.
The key distinction in BSL 1.1 is between production and non-production use:
| Use Case | Classification | License Required? |
|---|---|---|
| Local development and testing | Non-production | No |
| CI/CD pipeline testing | Non-production | No |
| Staging/QA environments | Non-production | No |
| Academic research | Non-production | No |
| Personal projects (non-commercial) | Non-production | No |
| Security auditing | Non-production | No |
| Serving production API traffic | Production | Yes (Free tier or above) |
| Processing live customer data | Production | Yes |
| Offering as a managed service | Production | Yes (commercial license) |
The Free tier counts as a valid license for production use. You can run Optima Forge in production at no cost within the Free tier limits (3 providers, 60 req/min, 1 ForgeBot).
A defining feature of BSL 1.1 is the automatic conversion to open source. After four years from each release date (the "Change Date"), the code for that release automatically converts to the Apache License 2.0. This means:
We chose BSL 1.1 because it aligns with our values of transparency, trust, and sustainable innovation:
Building enterprise-grade AI infrastructure requires significant investment in engineering, security research, and compliance. BSL ensures that we can sustain this investment while preventing cloud providers from taking our code and offering it as a competing managed service without contributing back.
Unlike proprietary software, every line of code in Optima Forge is available for inspection. Our 8-stage security pipeline, routing algorithms, memory systems, and payment logic are all auditable. For an infrastructure platform that handles sensitive AI workloads, this transparency builds trust.
The automatic conversion to Apache 2.0 ensures that our work eventually becomes fully open source. We build on open source technologies (Node.js, Redis, NATS, Qdrant, Neo4j, and many more), and BSL ensures we give back to the ecosystem on a defined timeline.
BSL 1.1 is well-understood and widely adopted by infrastructure companies. Organizations like CockroachDB, Sentry, HashiCorp, and MariaDB have proven that BSL creates a sustainable model for building high-quality infrastructure software.
Yes. Non-production use (development, testing, education, research) is always free with no license required. Production use is available on the Free tier at no cost within its limits. The Free tier is a valid production license.
Yes. The entire source code is available for reading and auditing. We encourage security researchers, compliance teams, and curious developers to review our code. If you find a vulnerability, please report it to [email protected].
For non-production use, yes. For production self-hosting, you need a valid subscription tier (Free or above). Enterprise customers can arrange on-premise or dedicated infrastructure deployments through a commercial agreement.
You can create forks and modifications for non-production use. Running modified code in production requires a commercial license. We welcome contributions through our community process -- accepted contributions are incorporated into the official release.
After four years, the code for that specific release automatically becomes Apache 2.0, with no restrictions on use, modification, or distribution. This is irrevocable. However, newer releases may still be under BSL until their own Change Dates arrive.
BSL is more permissive than proprietary licenses (you can read all code), more restrictive than MIT/Apache for production use (you need a license), and has a built-in expiration (automatic open source conversion). It is similar in philosophy to the licenses used by CockroachDB (BSL), HashiCorp (BSL), and Elastic (SSPL, a different source-available license).
The full BSL 1.1 license text is included in the LICENSE file at the root of the Optima Forge repository. Key parameters for our license grant:
For licensing questions, commercial licensing inquiries, or to discuss specific use cases: