Business Source License 1.1

Business Source License 1.1 is a way of releasing code publicly, but with a grace period attached — not everyone can just use it freely for business. Unlike the fully open licenses you usually see, this license lets you look at the code, but it blocks you from building and selling a competing product with it. It's a bit like publishing a new recipe but only letting the original chef open a restaurant with it for the first few years, while everyone else is barred from opening their own restaurant using that recipe.

But this restriction has a built-in expiration date. Once a company-specified period passes, the code automatically switches over to a fully open license. So for the company, it's a compromise: protect revenue in the short term by blocking unauthorized commercial use, while still giving developers the freedom to inspect and contribute to the code. Companies like Databricks and HashiCorp are known to have used this approach for their software.

So when this term shows up in an article, it's important not to confuse it with full open source. The key point is that just because the code is visible doesn't mean any company can build and sell a service on top of it.

In articles, this typically shows up in phrasing like "this project was released under the Business Source License 1.1" when introducing a tool or model. A common misunderstanding is assuming that because the code is up on GitHub, it must be fully open source. In reality, there are often separate restrictions on commercial redistribution or running a competing service.