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This page records the license of every ADE artifact an embedder can consume. It states facts, not legal advice. For anything that matters to your product, ask your own counsel.

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What each artifact is licensed under

The runtime binary redistributes third-party components under their own licenses. The NOTICE file at the repository root reproduces each one, and the desktop app ships that file with the application.

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May a proprietary app ship the runtime binary?

Yes, on three conditions:
  1. The binary is unmodified. Take it byte for byte from a GitHub release of arul28/ADE or from an @ade-dev/runtime-* npm package.
  2. Your application consumes it through the documented @ade-dev/sdk interface.
  3. You keep the runtime’s own license and notices with it.
Re-signing the binary and its native modules with your own code-signing identity does not count as modifying it. macOS and Windows require that of any application that bundles them, and Bundling gives the exact commands. Under those conditions the exception says that shipping the runtime inside your application does not, by that act alone, make your application subject to the AGPL. You may distribute your application under terms of your choice, including proprietary terms.

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What stays AGPL-3.0-only

  • The runtime binary itself. The exception adds a permission around it; it does not relicense it.
  • ADE desktop, the ade CLI, and every part of this repository outside the two MIT packages.
  • Any modified runtime. Patching, recompiling, or building from changed ADE source produces a modified work, and the AGPL applies to it in full.
  • Any product that links ADE source code, or that drives internal interfaces @ade-dev/sdk does not document.
Anyone who receives an unmodified runtime binary may rely on the exception, whether they got it from ADE or inside somebody else’s product.

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How the repository keeps this honest

scripts/check-package-licenses.mjs runs in CI for every published package. It asserts that the SPDX identifier in the package metadata, the LICENSE file in the package directory, the file list of the published tarball, and the ## License section of the package README all agree. A relicense that misses any one of those four places fails the build. The six @ade-dev/runtime-* packages are built by apps/ade-cli/scripts/build-runtime-npm-packages.mjs, which copies both the root LICENSE and RUNTIME-EMBEDDING-EXCEPTION.md into each one and refuses to publish a tarball that carries either file short.