Overview
Grounds follows a layered licensing model to balance openness, reuse, and protection of the core platform.Core Platform (AGPL-3.0)
All core and production code that makes up the Grounds platform—such as backend services, gameplay logic, proxies, and server components—is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3 (AGPL-3.0). This ensures that the core of Grounds remains open and that modifications must be shared, even when the software is used as a hosted service.Libraries, APIs, and Protocols (Apache-2.0)
Reusable libraries, shared utilities, APIs, and protocol definitions are licensed under the Apache License 2.0. This allows these components to be freely reused in other projects, including commercial and non-AGPL software, while providing legal clarity through an explicit patent grant.Developer Tooling and Infrastructure (Apache-2.0)
Developer tooling and infrastructure, such as CLI tools, Gradle plugins, and development helpers (for example,grounds-dev), are also licensed under Apache 2.0. These tools are intended to be easy to adopt and integrate without imposing copyleft requirements.
Documentation (MIT)
Documentation is licensed under the MIT License to allow unrestricted copying, redistribution, and reuse of knowledge, both inside and outside the Grounds ecosystem.Assets (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 or Custom)
Assets, including logos, textures, lore, music, and other creative content, are licensed separately under either CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 or a custom Grounds Asset License. This keeps the code open while protecting Grounds’ visual identity and creative work.Licensing is applied per repository/component. For authoritative terms, always check the
LICENSE file (and any NOTICE or asset-license files) in the relevant repository.