Licensing

Last updated

CCC is dual-licensed. Personal and other noncommercial use is free. Using it at work needs a commercial licence.

The short version

The CCC runtime is source-available and dual-licensed. Which licence applies to you depends on one question: are you using it for commercial purposes?

  • No — personal projects, study, a home lab, a charity, a school. It is free under the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0. Nothing to buy, nothing to sign.
  • Yes — you are using it at work, for a client, or in anything that makes money. You need a commercial licence from us.

This page is a plain-English summary so you can work out where you stand. The licence text itself is the authority on what these words mean, and it is linked below. Where this page and the licence disagree, the licence wins.

Free for noncommercial use

Noncommercial use is governed by the PolyForm Noncommercial license, which we publish verbatim in the repository. It costs nothing and you do not need to tell us you are using it.

These uses are free:

  • Personal, hobby and amateur use, including home labs.
  • Students, researchers, personal study and experimentation.
  • Charitable organisations.
  • Educational institutions.
  • Public research organisations.
  • Public safety and health organisations.
  • Environmental protection organisations.
  • Government institutions.

The licence covers running CCC, modifying it, and building on it for those purposes. It is not an open-source licence — it restricts commercial use, which is the whole point of the split.

Commercial use needs a licence

Anything that is not a permitted noncommercial purpose needs a separate commercial licence. In particular:

  • Use by or for a for-profit organisation, of any size.
  • Use in the course of employment, contracting or consulting — using CCC at work, or to deliver work for a client.
  • Use in internal business tooling, operations, or any revenue-generating activity.

If you are not sure whether your use is commercial, assume it is and get in touch. We would rather have a short email than have you guess wrong.

One thing worth saying plainly: the plan limits inside the product are there to make the free tier behave sensibly. They are not a licence check. Clearing them is not permission — the licence is what decides whether your use is allowed, not what the software lets you click.

How to get a commercial licence

Write to support@restartlabs.ai and tell us roughly how many people would be using it and what for.

Being honest about where this stands: there is no self-serve way to buy a commercial licence today. It is a negotiated agreement between you and Restart Labs LLC. We have no checkout, and the terms, pricing and scope — seat counts, host counts, and so on — are set in that agreement rather than published here. A signed commercial licence governs your use in place of the noncommercial licence.

The CCC Cloud paid plans described in the terms of service include a commercial licence for the runtime. A Pro or Team subscription buys the hosted service, higher limits, and the right to run the runtime commercially for as long as the plan is active — the licence lapses when the subscription does. Neither plan can be bought yet, because billing is not built. So: take a cloud plan if you want the licence settled without a negotiation, or email us for a standalone commercial licence if you want the runtime at work and nothing else.

The CCC runtime is copyright Restart Labs LLC, a Texas limited liability company, at 5900 Balcones Drive, Suite 100, Austin, TX 78731, United States.