Legal
License
Wachiman is source available under the Functional Source License. What you can do with it, what needs a commercial license, and how to ask for one.
Last updated: 2026-11-02
Wachiman’s source is public, and you can use it for free, including inside your company. It is source available, not open source: the license allows every use except offering it to others as a competing commercial product.
This page summarizes the license. The LICENSE file is the license, and it wins wherever the two
differ.
What you can do
Section titled “What you can do”- Run it on your own repositories, for your company or your own project.
- Read it, change it and fork it for your own use.
- Use it for non-commercial education and research.
- Set it up, configure it or run it for a client as part of professional services, when that client may use it too.
- Share a copy or a fork, as long as you keep the license text (or a link to it) and the copyright notices.
What needs a commercial license
Section titled “What needs a commercial license”Making Wachiman available to others in a commercial product or service that does what Wachiman does. The license calls this a Competing Use.
The definition also covers substitutes for Wachiman and for NIWAY products or services using it that
existed when that version was made available. The exact definition is in LICENSE.
Examples:
- a hosted pull request review service built from Wachiman’s code;
- a packaged or white-label review product you sell;
- an “AI review” feature built on Wachiman inside a paid developer platform.
A product that does not use Wachiman’s code is not affected by this license.
Examples
Section titled “Examples”These are summaries of the license text for orientation, not legal advice.
| Your situation | Do you need a commercial license? |
|---|---|
| Your team runs Wachiman on your company’s repositories | No. This is internal use |
| You maintain a project and run Wachiman on its pull requests | No |
| A consultancy installs and runs it for a client as part of an engagement | No, when the client may use it too |
| You fork it and change it for your own company | No. Keep the license text and notices if you share the fork |
| A student or researcher uses it, non-commercially | No |
| You sell a hosted or packaged code-review product built from it | Yes |
| You add it to a paid developer platform as a review feature | Yes |
| A consultancy sells a recurring, packaged review service; a company offers a free hosted version | Not clear. Ask before you build on it |
When a version becomes Apache 2.0
Section titled “When a version becomes Apache 2.0”Each version published under FSL-1.1-ALv2 also becomes available under Apache 2.0 two years after that version is made available. The two years run per version, not for the project as a whole, so newer versions stay under the Functional Source License while older ones open up. Versions published before the license changed are not part of this promise (see “Earlier versions”).
Illustration, not a real version: a version made available on 1 March 2027 may be used under Apache 2.0, including for a competing product, from 1 March 2029.
Earlier versions
Section titled “Earlier versions”Everything published before the license changed, including every release up to and including
v1.3.0, was published under the GNU Affero General Public License v3 and remains available under
it. The
LICENSE file inside each release says which license that release carries.
Commercial license
Section titled “Commercial license”Write to contact@niway.com. Tell us who you are, what you want to offer and to whom, and how you would use or change Wachiman. We reply with whether you need a license at all, and if you do, with terms agreed case by case. This page lists no prices because there is no price list.
The name
Section titled “The name”The license gives no right to use the name Wachiman, its logo or its mascot, other than to say where the software comes from. See the trademark policy.