Which license applies to you?
Two products, licensed separately on purpose. We would rather tell you which one applies than have you find out later.
| Product | Who | Cost | How to get it |
|---|---|---|---|
| HotLoop Gateway | Individual, home, hobbyist, nonprofit, or education | Free | Self-host directly, no agreement needed |
| HotLoop Gateway | Any business or for-profit use, internal or customer-facing | Through Embernet | Exclusively through Embernet |
| HotLoop Flow | Anyone, including businesses and commercial use | Free | Self-host directly under Apache-2.0, no agreement needed |
HotLoop Flow is Apache-2.0
Flow is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0, which is an OSI-approved open source license with no business-use restriction. A business can run it, modify it, and ship it commercially without asking anyone, and it does not need Embernet or anybody else's permission.
HotLoop Gateway is source-available
The Gateway is under the HotLoop Community License. It is source-available and it is not an OSI-approved open source license, because it restricts business use. Individuals get it free, and any business that wants it goes through our partner Embernet, which provides the support, the SLAs, and the warranty. That is not us crippling the free version to squeeze you later. It is a real partnership.
A few concrete situations for the Gateway, because “business use” gets fuzzy fast once people start talking themselves into it.
| Situation | Cost |
|---|---|
| Automating your own house | Free |
| A hobby project you are building for fun | Free |
| A class project or a student lab | Free |
| A local nonprofit running it in their own space | Free |
| Running it inside a company, internal only, no customers touching it | Through Embernet |
| Deploying it as part of a product or service you sell | Through Embernet |
| A landlord automating a rental property they operate as a business | Through Embernet |
| A contractor installing and managing it for paying clients | Through Embernet |
Genuinely unsure which side of the Gateway line you are on? Ask before you build a whole setup on a bad assumption. Email support@hotloop.io, or go straight to Embernet if it looks like a business case.
One note on history
So nobody finds this by surprise. Container images for earlier versions of what is now HotLoop Gateway, versions 4.0.0 through 4.3.1, were published publicly under Apache-2.0, along with the Helm chart packages released beside them. They remain available, and they remain under Apache-2.0. The HotLoop Community License applies to the Gateway from its first release under the HotLoop name onward. HotLoop Flow, first published as Emberwire, has been Apache-2.0 the whole time and is not changing.
The plain-language version above is a summary. The legal text wins every argument, including this one. The Gateway's is in the HotLoop-io/HotLoop-io repository and mirrored on the docs site, including the note it carries about legal review.