One license. Seven products. No keys.
Every HotLoop product is under HotLoop's own Business Source License 1.1, with HotLoop LLC as the licensor. Home and lab use is free. Business use is free when you run it through EmberNet. That's the whole deal, and it's the one we should have shipped from the start. Know which side you're on before you build a plant on a guess.
| Who | Cost | How to get it |
|---|---|---|
| Home and lab use | Free | Self-host directly, no agreement and no key |
| Accredited schools, nonprofits and government bodies | Free | Self-host directly for your own operations, no agreement and no key |
| Business use | Free, through EmberNet | Run it through EmberNet, HotLoop's free business-use channel |
It covers the whole lineup
The same license applies to every product, so there is no second set of terms to read when you add one.
- HotLoop IoT
- HotLoop Edge
- HotLoop Gateway
- HotLoop Edge Relay
- HotLoop Flow
- HotLoop Cascade
- HotLoop Transmitter
What the Business Source License means here
There are no license keys and nothing unlocks at runtime. Which product you run is which image you pulled. It is source-available, not OSI-approved open source, and we won't pretend otherwise.
Each version converts to GPL-3.0 or later four years after it is released. A release from today is a GPL-3.0 release in 2030, so what you build on HotLoop doesn't depend on HotLoop staying in business.
A few real situations
“Business use” gets fuzzy fast once somebody starts talking themselves into it, so here are the usual ones.
| Situation | Cost |
|---|---|
| Automating your own house | Free |
| A hobby project you are building for fun | Free |
| A home lab, however large and however much of your weekend it eats | Free |
| A class project or a student lab | Free |
| An accredited school or university running it for its own operations | Free |
| A nonprofit, or a city or other government body, running it for its own operations | 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 |
Not sure which side you're on? Ask before you build a whole setup on a bad assumption. Email support@hotloop.io, or go straight to EmberNet if it smells like a business case. Either way the answer costs you nothing.
Using HotLoop in a business
Two ways in, and you can take both.
Do it yourself on EmberNet. EmberNet is the free channel business use of HotLoop goes through. Sign up for EmberNet and run HotLoop there at no cost.
Have it rolled out for you. Fireball Industries is our Official Systems Integrator. If you want a company to design, install and support a rollout, that is who to talk to.
The docs cover the business route too, in case that is where you landed first.
The summary above is plain language and the license text below wins every argument, including this one. Questions go to support@hotloop.io.
The license text
This is HotLoop-io/HotLoop-io LICENSE.md, word for word. The site's build fails if this copy and that one ever differ.
License text copyright (c) 2024 MariaDB plc, All Rights Reserved. “Business Source License” is a trademark of MariaDB plc.
Parameters
Licensor: HotLoop LLC
Licensed Work: HotLoop IoT, HotLoop Edge, HotLoop Gateway, HotLoop Edge Relay, HotLoop Flow, HotLoop Cascade, and HotLoop Transmitter, in the version of each that you received. The Licensed Work is (c) 2026 HotLoop LLC.
Additional Use Grant: You may make production use of the Licensed Work in these three ways, and only these three.
(1) Home and Lab Use. You may use the Licensed Work for personal, household, hobby, non-commercial, educational, evaluation, development and testing purposes. Evaluation, development and testing count as Home and Lab Use only while the Licensed Work is not running, monitoring or controlling live operations of a business.
(2) Education, Nonprofit and Government Use. If you are an Educational Institution, a Nonprofit Organization or a Government Body, you may use the Licensed Work for your own operations and mission, anywhere, without running it through EmberNet. You may have a contractor install and operate the Licensed Work for you, on equipment you own or control.
(3) Business Use through EmberNet. You may make Business Use of the Licensed Work if, and only if, you run it through EmberNet (https://embernet.ai), HotLoop’s channel for business use, under the EmberNet terms in effect for the account you run it under.
For purposes of this grant:
“Educational Institution” means a school, college, university or other institution that is accredited or licensed by a government authority or a recognized accrediting body to provide education.
“Nonprofit Organization” means an organization that is organized and operated as a nonprofit under the law of the place where it is organized, whose net earnings do not benefit any private owner or member, and that is recognized as tax-exempt or as a charity in that place.
“Government Body” means a national, state, provincial, regional, local or tribal government, or an agency, department or public authority of one, acting in its governmental capacity. A company that a government owns and that sells goods or services for profit is not a Government Body.
Each of the three is the institution itself. A for-profit subsidiary, affiliate or spin-off of an Educational Institution, a Nonprofit Organization or a Government Body is not one, and neither is a for-profit business that serves one.
“Business Use” means any use by, for or on behalf of a company, partnership, sole proprietorship or other for-profit organization, or in the course of earning a living, to run, monitor, control or support its operations, facilities, products or services. It is Business Use whether the use is purely internal or reaches customers, and whether or not a fee is charged. Use that is not Home and Lab Use and is not covered by paragraph (2) is Business Use.
“Run it through EmberNet” means that each copy of the Licensed Work used for Business Use is deployed and operated under an EmberNet account. The account may be the account of the organization the Licensed Work is operated for, or the account of a systems integrator that installs and operates it for that organization. Either one is acceptable. A “systems integrator” is a business that installs, configures and operates the Licensed Work for its customers on equipment or in cloud accounts that the customer owns or controls. A systems integrator may charge for its own services, such as installation, configuration and support, but not for the Licensed Work itself or for access to it.
This grant does not extend to any of the following: (a) offer the Licensed Work, or any of its functionality, to third parties as a hosted, managed or software-as-a-service offering; (b) sell, resell, sublicense, rent or lease the Licensed Work; (c) embed or bundle the Licensed Work in a product or service that you sell, license or otherwise provide for a fee; or (d) charge anyone for access to the Licensed Work.
Change Date: Four years after the date the version of the Licensed Work you received was first made publicly available under this License.
Change License: GNU General Public License, Version 3.0 or any later version (GPL-3.0-or-later)
Notice
The Business Source License (this document, or the “License”) is not an Open Source license. However, the Licensed Work will eventually be made available under an Open Source License, as stated in this License.
Terms
The Licensor hereby grants you the right to copy, modify, create derivative works, redistribute, and make non-production use of the Licensed Work. The Licensor may make an Additional Use Grant, above, permitting limited production use.
Effective on the Change Date, or the fourth anniversary of the first publicly available distribution of a specific version of the Licensed Work under this License, whichever comes first, the Licensor hereby grants you rights under the terms of the Change License, and the rights granted in the paragraph above terminate.
If your use of the Licensed Work does not comply with the requirements currently in effect as described in this License, you must purchase a commercial license from the Licensor, its affiliated entities, or authorized resellers, or you must refrain from using the Licensed Work.
All copies of the original and modified Licensed Work, and derivative works of the Licensed Work, are subject to this License. This License applies separately for each version of the Licensed Work and the Change Date may vary for each version of the Licensed Work released by Licensor.
You must conspicuously display this License on each original or modified copy of the Licensed Work. If you receive the Licensed Work in original or modified form from a third party, the terms and conditions set forth in this License apply to your use of that work.
Any use of the Licensed Work in violation of this License will automatically terminate your rights under this License for the current and all other versions of the Licensed Work.
This License does not grant you any right in any trademark or logo of Licensor or its affiliates (provided that you may use a trademark or logo of Licensor as expressly required by this License).
TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, THE LICENSED WORK IS PROVIDED ON AN “AS IS” BASIS. LICENSOR HEREBY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES AND CONDITIONS, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING (WITHOUT LIMITATION) WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND TITLE.