License.
+Keysat is a hybrid project. The daemon is source-available under a custom license; the four SDKs are open source (MIT). The split is intentional: developers integrating Keysat into their own software should never have to think about license compatibility, while operators running the daemon agree to a few common-sense restrictions that keep the project sustainable.
+ +TL;DR
+| Component | License | Use freely? |
|---|---|---|
| Keysat daemon ( keysat-xyz/keysat) |
+ Keysat Source-Available License 1.0 ( LicenseRef-Keysat-1.0) |
+ Audit, run, modify ✓ Sell licenses to your own products ✓ Redistribute binaries ✗ Run as a hosted service for others ✗ |
+
| SDKs ( keysat-client-{rust,ts,python,go}) |
+ MIT | +Anything ✓ Including commercial use, redistribution, modification, sublicensing, private use. |
+
| Activate-license template ( keysat-activate-template) |
+ MIT | +Anything ✓ Copy the buyer-side actions directly into your own StartOS package. |
+
Why source-available for the daemon?
+Two reasons, both pragmatic:
+-
+
- The work has real cost. Building Keysat takes time. The source-available model lets the project be funded by operators on the Pro / Patron tiers who get value from a maintained, evolving daemon — without forcing every operator onto a paid tier. +
- The "AWS-hosts-our-open-source" failure mode. Fully open-source self-hosted projects routinely get strip-mined by cloud providers who host them as a managed service and capture the revenue. The daemon license forbids this specific pattern. Everything else — running your own instance, modifying it, auditing the code, selling licenses for your own products through it — is permitted. +
The SDKs are MIT because they sit inside your software. License compatibility there is critical and the MIT license is the modern default for libraries you embed.
+ +What you can do (daemon)
+-
+
- Audit the source. Read every line; understand the cryptography, the storage, the API surface. +
- Run an instance on infrastructure you control. A Start9 box at home, a VPS, a cloud instance — anywhere you deploy it. +
- Modify it for your needs. Add features, change defaults, integrate it more deeply with your StartOS package. Modifications remain under the same license. +
- Operate it as your private licensing service to issue signed license keys for software products you sell or distribute. This is the intended use case — Keysat exists for this. +
- Maintain a public fork. Forks on GitHub are fine as long as they carry the license unchanged and don't enable any of the prohibited uses below. +
What you can't do without prior permission (daemon)
+-
+
- Distribute compiled binaries to third parties. Including free of charge. The intent is that operators run Keysat themselves; they don't hand pre-built copies to others. +
- Provide Keysat as a hosted / managed service to third parties. "Keysat-as-a-Service" run by a cloud provider for a fee, or by anyone other than the operator using it for their own products, is the one pattern explicitly forbidden. Your own customers receiving signed license keys from your instance are not a hosted service — that's the daemon's intended use case. +
- Sell, sublicense, lease, or rent the daemon software itself. Distinct from selling licenses through the daemon, which is allowed. +
- Remove copyright notices or this license text. +
If you have a use case that crosses one of these lines — commercial redistribution, white-label deployment, a managed-service offering — email licensing@keysat.xyz. The license isn't designed to be a wall; it's designed to make commercial expansion an explicit conversation rather than an implicit one.
+ +Contributions
+By submitting code, documentation, designs, or other contributions to the upstream daemon repo, you grant Keysat a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use, modify, relicense, and redistribute your contribution under the same license (or any later version). You retain ownership of your contribution; this is a license-back, not an assignment. The full text is in LICENSE Section 4.
+ +Full license text
+The authoritative text lives at github.com/keysat-xyz/keysat/blob/main/LICENSE. This page is a plain-English summary; the LICENSE file is what governs in any conflict.
+ +SDK licenses
+Each SDK ships under the MIT License — included verbatim in the LICENSE file of each repo:
-
+
- keysat-client-rust +
- keysat-client-ts +
- keysat-client-python +
- keysat-client-go +
- keysat-activate-template +
You can use these in any software — open-source, closed-source, commercial, free, anything. The only obligation MIT imposes is preserving the copyright notice when you redistribute the SDK source itself.
+ +Commercial inquiries
+For commercial redistribution, resale, hosted-service rights, white-label deployment, or any other use not expressly granted by the source-available license: licensing@keysat.xyz.
+