Introducing the Pipedream Source Available License

Tod Sacerdoti

• 2 min read
Introducing the Pipedream Source Available License

TL;DR - We’ve changed our license from the MIT License to the new Pipedream Source Available License. We wanted to share why we made this change and what it means for our users and contributors.

When we started Pipedream, we strongly believed that all the components in our integration marketplace should be open source. Our customers should know exactly what each component does, could modify them in any way, and could contribute their own components.

However, as our product matured, it became clear that the MIT license provides all the benefits of open-source development without the appropriate protections to ensure we can build a sustainable business.

To keep the source code of components on GitHub, and address the issues with the MIT license, we’re introducing the Pipedream Source Available License.

This new license will be applied from January 3, 2022 to all our code hosted in our main GitHub @pipedreamhq/pipedream repository.

What does this mean exactly?

We remain committed to all components in our integration registry being source-available.

Under the Pipedream Source Available License, you can access, modify, or redistribute the source code. But you can’t use the code to build a competitive product. Here’s the exact language:

“Excluded Purpose” means any commercial use of the software including, but not limited to, making available any software-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service, infrastructure-as-a-service or other online service that competes with the Software or any other Pipedream products or services.

For example, the license doesn’t allow you to use Pipedream components in a SaaS integration platform or as part of the integration registry in your own product. If you aren’t building a competitive product with Pipedream components, this license change will not affect you.

Why did we do this?

We think this is an important step forward. This allows us to accelerate development of our trigger and action components, knowing the investment we make will not be used by competitive products.

We are not alone in making this transition to a source available license, and have been heavily influenced by the licenses of:

What’s next?

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