Licensing
Which licence each part of the repository carries, what that means for embedding the widget versus modifying the server, and what the Enterprise Edition does and does not cover.
Deskbell is one repository under three licences: AGPL-3.0 for the server and
the engine, MIT for everything that touches your page or your code, and a
commercial licence for the Enterprise Edition directory. LICENSING.md in the
repository is the authoritative map and every directory carries its own
LICENSE file.
The map
| Part | Licence | What it is |
|---|---|---|
apps/web, apps/worker | AGPL-3.0-only | The dashboard, the API and the worker: the server you run |
packages/core | AGPL-3.0-only | The answering engine: retrieval, grounding, citations, refusals |
packages/connectors, packages/db, packages/evals | AGPL-3.0-only | Ingestion, the schema and migrations, the eval harness |
packages/widget-core, widget-snippet, widget-react, sdk, ui, shared | MIT | The widget, the loader, the React wrapper, the SDK, the component library and the shared types |
packages/ee | Commercial | The Enterprise Edition |
The license field in each package.json matches the table, which is what
dependency scanners read.
Embedding the widget
Everything you ship to your users is MIT: the widget, the loader, the React wrapper and the SDK. They talk to your Deskbell server over HTTP. Nothing in your application links against AGPL code, so the AGPL places no obligation on your own source.
Self-hosting the server
Running Deskbell unmodified carries no obligation beyond passing the licence along. If you modify the AGPL-licensed parts and let users interact with your modified version over a network, AGPL-3.0 section 13 requires you to offer those users the corresponding source of your modified version. A commercial licence is the alternative for modifications you would rather keep private.
The Enterprise Edition
packages/ee is commercially licensed. Its contents may be viewed, downloaded
and modified for development and testing without a subscription; using them in
production requires one. packages/ee/FEATURES is the enumerated list of what
that covers: multi-organisation management, white-label rights, SAML and OIDC
sign-on, SCIM provisioning, custom roles, audit logging, and retention and
redaction policies.
The answering core is never Enterprise Edition. Retrieval, grounding,
citations, refusal behaviour, every connector, the eval harness and gap
analytics are AGPL and stay that way. The boundary is the operations and
compliance layer, and it is enumerated so it cannot move quietly: a change to
it is a commit to LICENSING.md and packages/ee/FEATURES, in public.
DESKBELL_EE_LICENSE_KEY in the environment enables the Enterprise Edition
code path. In the core, that is what lets the "Powered by Deskbell" badge be
removed from the widget.
Contributions
Contributions are accepted under the repository's licences for the directory they touch. A contributor licence agreement is part of the public release process; Contributing has the workflow.
For commercial licensing, email hello@deskbell.dev.