Licenses and origin
Kisuno is coming as genuine open source under the MIT license, the repository follows shortly; the third party components shipped with it are released under their own licenses. This page states what that means in practice and lists every building block with its license. It is written for everyone who needs to know before a purchase what they are getting into.
The license of the overall product
Section titled “The license of the overall product”All of our own code will be released under the MIT license, the repository follows shortly. It is one of the most permissive licenses there is: you may use, modify, redistribute and commercially deploy the software as long as the license text and the copyright notice are preserved.
What that means for you as a customer in concrete terms:
| Commitment | What is behind it |
|---|---|
| Self hosting is free | You pay nothing for the software. You pay for operation, support and integration if you want to buy those from someone |
| No per seat gating | The number of users is nowhere limited technically and nowhere capped by the license. Ten people cost the same as three hundred, namely nothing |
| No feature gating | There is no enterprise edition with extra features. What is in the repository is the full feature set |
| No branding clause | Name, logo, favicon and welcome text are configuration. You may rename the interface to your own company without observing a user count or a deadline |
| No copyleft | You are not obliged to publish your own extensions |
The license text is in the file LICENSE in the repository, which also names the copyright
holder.
Our own building blocks
Section titled “Our own building blocks”| Component | License |
|---|---|
| monorepo with distribution and documentation | MIT |
| admin panel | MIT |
| MCP gateway including the model router | MIT |
| example connector bridge | MIT |
| Outlook add-in | MIT |
The shipped third party components
Section titled “The shipped third party components”The distribution deploys unmodified third party components under their own licenses. Our code does not link any of them in, it talks to them through their normal interfaces. No combined work comes into being.
| Component | Task | License |
|---|---|---|
| LibreChat | the chat application itself | MIT |
| MongoDB | database | SSPL-1.0 ¹ |
| Meilisearch | full text search | MIT, individual parts of the Enterprise Edition under BUSL-1.1 ² |
| SearXNG | metasearch engine for web search | AGPL-3.0 ³ |
| pgvector | vector database | PostgreSQL license |
| rag_api | embedding of files | MIT |
| Caddy | reverse proxy | Apache-2.0 |
| connector bridges from third party projects | connection of third party systems. Which project sits behind which bridge is named in the operating documentation included with the delivery | MPL-2.0 and MIT |
Not all of these components are used in every delivery. On the structure, see the services and ports page.
Code execution
Section titled “Code execution”For code execution either one of these two backends is used.
| Backend | Role | License |
|---|---|---|
| ClickHouse code-interpreter | hardened variant with microVM isolation | Apache-2.0 |
| LibreCodeInterpreter | lighter variant | Apache-2.0 |
Both bring further helper services from their projects. Their licenses are documented in the respective projects. Since they differ depending on the version, check them for the version you actually deploy.
This documentation
Section titled “This documentation”The documentation site is built with Astro and Starlight, both under the MIT license. The full text search runs entirely in the browser, there is no search service and no tracking.
Footnotes
Section titled “Footnotes”¹ MongoDB is released under the SSPL-1.0. This license applies when someone sells MongoDB itself as a database service to third parties. Using it as the internal database of your own installation, as is the case here, is not affected by it.
² Meilisearch declares MIT AND BUSL-1.1 for the shipped version. By far the largest part
is under MIT, individual components of the Enterprise Edition are under the Business Source
License. We run the official image unmodified.
³ SearXNG is released under the AGPL-3.0. We name that openly instead of hiding it. We run the official image unmodified and call it only through its normal interface. The source code of the unmodified version deployed is public. This has no effect on the MIT licensing of our code, because it is neither linked in nor modified and no combined work comes into being.
Why we built our own admin panel
Section titled “Why we built our own admin panel”For some time now LibreChat has shipped an official admin panel. That panel is released under the AGPL-3.0, meaning a copyleft license with a network clause. Anyone who deploys and modifies it has to disclose the source code even when the software is only provided over the network and never distributed.
For a product that is meant to stay explicitly permissive, that is the wrong path. Therefore:
- The AGPL panel is not part of the distribution. It was a transitional solution for internal tests, before our own panel was finished.
- Our panel is an independent new build and will be released under the MIT license. It works against the same administration interface of LibreChat, which is itself under MIT.
- No code was taken from the AGPL panel. The panel served as a model for the interaction design, not as a source. The same rule applies to outside contributions.
The result: you can self host, modify and redistribute Kisuno without copyleft obligations. That is the actual reason for the extra effort.
Contributing
Section titled “Contributing”The source code is coming soon to the Kisuno repository on GitHub. The exact address is then stated by your source of supply, or your provider tells you what it is.
Contributions go in as a pull request against main. Before your first contribution it is
worth looking at the file CONTRIBUTING.md in the repository, which describes the process.
The binding conventions on structure, building, checking, commit format and secret handling
are in AGENTS.md.
A few points that have proven useful in practice:
- Where the change belongs. Sidecars, distribution and documentation go into this repository. Changes to LibreChat itself belong in the fork repository.
- Small and limited to one topic. Do not mix reformatting with substantive changes.
- No secrets in the diff. Keys are referenced exclusively as variables, and new variables get a placeholder in the configuration template.
- Contributions are released under the MIT license of this project. Third party code may only be taken over with a compatible license and an attribution note. No code from AGPL sources, in particular not from the AGPL admin panel of LibreChat.