Licensing
Last updated 30 August 2026. Covers the NarrativeTrace libraries, not this website.
NarrativeTrace's API and output format are open standards (Apache 2.0). Its runtime is free and source-available (BSL 1.1, converting to Apache 2.0 four years after each release), because code that runs in your process should be auditable. Its intelligence is commercial.
That is the whole model in three sentences. The rest of this page says what each of the three categories contains, spells out the Business Source License parameters we chose, and points at the texts that actually govern — because a summary never does.
Three categories
| Category | What it covers | Licence |
|---|---|---|
| Open standard | The annotation and decorator API, the output-format specification, and the clarity
rubric — the api package on every platform. Anyone may implement
them, including a competitor. |
Apache License 2.0 |
| Free runtime | The engine that turns running code into narratives inside your process: capture,
rendering, the value-free .nt artifact, clarity scoring, and the
framework integrations. |
Business Source License 1.1 — free to use in production, source-available, and Apache 2.0 four years after each release |
| Commercial | Cross-run aggregation, AI integration at scale, approval governance, compliance-grade audit, and the hosted backend — Pro and Enterprise. | Proprietary |
The line between them is not a feature ladder, it is a question of who bears the cost. A specification anyone can implement is worth more to us open than closed. A runtime that executes inside your application should be readable by the people who have to trust it. Analysis that runs across many runs and many teams is what we sell.
The runtime: Business Source License 1.1
BSL 1.1 is a source-available licence with four parameters that the licensor fills in. Ours are:
| Licensor | Empower Agile |
|---|---|
| Licensed Work | The NarrativeTrace runtime, version by version, as published |
| Additional Use Grant | Production use for any purpose, including providing services to your own customers, except offering the work as a competing logging, tracing, or code-narrative product |
| Change Date | Four years from the date the Licensed Work is published |
| Change License | Apache License, Version 2.0 |
What that means in practice
- You can run it in production. Any purpose, any scale, commercial or not, without paying us and without asking us. That is what the Additional Use Grant is for; it is not a trial and it does not expire.
- You can build a product on it and serve your own customers with that product. Tracing your own systems is production use, whoever they serve.
- You can read, patch, fork, vendor, and audit the source. It runs inside your process; you should not have to take our word for what it does.
- You cannot resell NarrativeTrace itself — offering the work as a competing logging, tracing, or code-narrative product is the one use the grant excludes.
- Every release becomes Apache 2.0. Four years after a version is published, that version's Change Date arrives and it is Apache 2.0 for everyone, forever. The clock is per release and it starts without us doing anything.
We do not call the runtime open source, and neither should you. BSL 1.1 is not an OSI-approved licence: it restricts one field of use, and that is a real restriction, not a formality. "Free and source-available" is the accurate phrase until a release reaches its Change Date, at which point that release genuinely is Apache 2.0.
Documentation, schemas, and this site
- Documentation prose — the pages under Docs — is CC BY 4.0. Quote it, translate it, build a course on it; keep the attribution.
- JSON schema files for the output formats are Apache 2.0, on the same reasoning as the specification they describe: a format nobody may parse is not a format.
- The NarrativeTrace name and logo are not covered by any of the above. The brand bundle says what it may be used for.
Where the authoritative text lives
This page is a summary written to be read. It is not the licence. The text that governs is
the LICENSE file shipped in each repository and in each published artifact,
together with the per-file SPDX-License-Identifier header. Where this page and
that text disagree, that text wins.
- Full BSL 1.1 text, as published by MariaDB: mariadb.com/bsl11
- Full Apache License 2.0 text: apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
- The repositories themselves: github.com/narrativetrace
Questions about a use this page does not obviously answer — embedding, redistribution, anything that feels close to the line — are welcome at [email protected]. We would rather answer than have you guess.