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0004 — BSL 1.1 license, Apache 2.0 after 4 years ​

  • Status: accepted
  • Date: 2026-04-27
  • Tags: licensing

Context ​

DentalPin is open source and intends to grow a community. We also fund development through a managed SaaS deployment and partner integrators. A permissive license alone (Apache 2.0, MIT) lets a competing SaaS take the codebase and operate it without contributing back, undermining the funding model that pays for ongoing development. A pure copyleft (AGPL) deters integrators and partner clinics from contributing.

The Business Source License 1.1 (BSL) is the middle ground used by HashiCorp, MariaDB, CockroachDB, and Sentry: source-available, free for non-competitive use, with an automatic conversion to a true OSS license after a fixed number of years.

Decision ​

DentalPin is licensed under BSL 1.1. Per-version conversion: each released version becomes Apache 2.0 four years after its release date.

Use restriction (BSL "Additional Use Grant"): non-production use is unrestricted; production use is permitted except for offering a commercial managed dental clinic management service to third parties that is substantially similar to DentalPin's own SaaS.

The Veri*Factu module (and any other compliance module) inherits the same license terms.

Consequences ​

Good ​

  • Source remains fully visible, modifiable, and self-hostable by any clinic.
  • Funding model is protected for 4 years per release, after which the community gets a true OSS license on that version.
  • Contributors know the license trajectory upfront — no rug-pulls.

Bad / accepted trade-offs ​

  • Some downstream packagers (Linux distros, OSS catalogs) won't list us while versions are under BSL.
  • Commercial competitors must negotiate a commercial license or wait the 4 years. We're fine with that.
  • Contributor License Agreement (CLA) required so the relicense conversion is unambiguous.

Alternatives considered ​

  • Apache 2.0 from day one. Rejected: no protection against a SaaS fork undercutting the funding model that pays maintainers.
  • AGPLv3. Rejected: deters partner integrators and self-hosting clinics, even though network-clause concerns are mostly theoretical.
  • Pure proprietary. Rejected: incompatible with the project mission of open clinical software.

How to verify the rule still holds ​

  • LICENSE at repo root.
  • Per-release LICENSE-CONVERSION-DATES.md (when introduced) lists the Apache 2.0 conversion date for each released version.

References ​