Akka includes the Business Source License (BSL) v1.1. Commercial licenses with additional use grants and legal protections can be acquired separately from Lightbend.
The BSL is a source available license that freely allows usage of Akka for development and other non-production work such as testing. After 3 years, Akka code licensed with BSL reverts to Apache v2 licensing. The BSL includes an additional usage grant allowing open source projects to embed Akka. The BSL was originally created by David Axmark and Michael Widenius and has been adopted by organizations such as Hashicorp, MariaDB, Cockroach Labs, Sentry, and Materialized.
Production use of Akka requires a commercial license from Lightbend. Lightbend sells subscriptions for pre-production and production usage which include commercial Akka licenses. Please visit the pricing page or contact us at akka-license@lightbend.com if you have questions about Lightbend subscriptions.
Akka code licensed as BSL reverts to Apache 2.0 with a Change Date of 3 years, i.e. whenever Akka code is released under the BSL, that version will revert from BSL to the Apache license three years later and, then, Apache licensing terms will apply to Akka.
The ‘Change License’ clause within the BSL is designed to encourage Lightbend to continually invest into Akka’s advancements, while also enabling the vast majority of users to continue using Akka for free.
You do not. The BSL offers a grant for use in all of these environments. Lightbend provides additional Development and Academic subscriptions which include commercial licenses and support for Akka.
Lightbend sells ISV / OEM commercial licenses which include redistribution usage rights of Akka to your customers. OEM licenses allow distribution to your customers without your customers having to procure a license from Lightbend. Please visit the pricing page or contact us at akka-license@lightbend.com for details.
The BLS includes a customizable “Additional Use Grant” that grants production usage for OSS projects leveraging Akka, such as the Play Framework.
Yes. Please contact us at akka-license@lightbend.com for details.
Not necessarily. Non-profit organizations and governments whose annual operating budgets are greater than $25M must acquire a commercial license via a Lightbend subscription.
We offer many pre-production and production subscriptions which include commercial Akka licenses for free. All other subscriptions start at $0.25 per core hour.
You only need a commercial license for any copies of the software that are being used for production.
Until the Change Date, the final mixed code will be bound by the license of the BSL code and the license of the other code. This means that the mixed code will still require a commercial license for production usage of the BSL licensed code. After the Change Date, the final mixed code will be bound by at least the Change License (i.e. Apache 2.0), along with whatever licensing requirements are mandated by the other code’s license.
Yes. Your usage of Akka during development will be defined by the BSL. You will need a commercial Akka license in order to ship your product or go into production with Akka.