LICENSING

Caveman Licensing

Everything in this repository is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0, starting with Caveman 3.0.0. That covers the skill, CLI, SDKs, middleware, extension, and the whole runtime: Engine, Proxy, Browse, MCP server, shrink, the cavemem Go core, and the shared Go platform.

Caveman Cloud, the hosted service, is separate commercial software. Its source is not in this repository and this license does not cover it.

Canonical Files

Root LICENSE is the verbatim Apache License 2.0 text.
Root NOTICE carries the copyright line and third-party attributions.
Root LICENSE-MIT keeps the MIT License text that covered the MIT parts of the repository before 3.0.0 (see below).
Every directory that ships its own LICENSE (npm and PyPI packages, the npm launchers, the Go modules) carries a byte-identical copy of the root LICENSE.

What changed in 3.0.0

Before 3.0.0 the repository was split-licensed. The skill and adoption surfaces (skill, CLI, SDKs, middleware, contracts, provider catalog, extension shell, cavemem clients) were MIT. The Engine-linked runtime (engine/, proxy/, rewriter/, browse/, mcp/, shrink/, the mem/ Go core, shared/platform/, and the extension's bundled engine.wasm) was Business Source License 1.1 with an Additional Use Grant.

From 3.0.0 on, all of it is Apache-2.0. There is no longer a hosted-service restriction, Change Date, or commercial license requirement for the code in this repository.

Releases published before 3.0.0 keep the terms they shipped with. The Apache license applies to 3.0.0 and later.

Outside contributors wrote code in the formerly MIT parts under MIT terms. That code stays available under the MIT License, whose notice must travel with it, so the pre-3.0.0 MIT text is kept verbatim in LICENSE-MIT and referenced from NOTICE.

Contributions

Contributions are inbound=outbound: you license your change under Apache-2.0, the same terms as the rest of the repository. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Third-party code

engine/pixel/ is a Go port of pxpipe (MIT, Copyright (c) 2026 claude-image-proxy contributors) with embedded glyph atlases derived from the Spleen 5x8 (BSD-2-Clause) and GNU Unifont (OFL-1.1 / GPLv2 with font-embedding exception) fonts. The upstream MIT and font notices are preserved in engine/pixel/NOTICE and engine/pixel/assets/.

browse/ links MIT-licensed chromedp modules; see browse/NOTICE.

The runtime binaries and container image link third-party Go modules (MIT, BSD-3-Clause, Apache-2.0); every binary release ships their license texts as THIRD_PARTY_GO_LICENSES.tar.gz, and the image under /licenses/third_party/. The release caveman-proxy and caveman-engine are built with zig cc and statically link Zig's compiler runtime (MIT), musl libc on Linux (MIT), and the mingw-w64 runtime on Windows (ZPL-2.1); their notices ship as LICENSE.zig, COPYRIGHT.musl and COPYING.mingw-w64. The CLI contains a port of part of Qwen Code (Apache-2.0) and bundles MIT-licensed @clack/prompts and its dependencies; see packages/cli/NOTICE. The extension ships the Geist fonts under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 (extension/fonts/GEIST_LICENSE.txt).

Trademarks

"Caveman" and Caveman logos are trademarks of Julius Brussee. The Apache License grants no trademark rights. Nominative use such as "Powered by Caveman" or "Optimized by Caveman" is allowed when truthful. Naming a product, hosted service, or fork in a way that implies Caveman sponsorship requires written permission.

See TRADEMARKS.md for the full trademark policy.