A downstream integrator opened issue #1349 on the Ocean Industries Concept Lab’s OpenBridge web components repository arguing that the licence switch from Apache-2.0 to a delayed-open model was merged as a “chore” on 2026-09-17 without announcement, deprecation window or discussion, and only became visible when the 2.0.0 stable release shipped under AGPL-3.0-only on 2026-09-29, since the 2.0.0-next.155 prerelease from 2026-09-16 was still Apache-2.0. Under the scheme documented in the project’s README, every version and commit is licensed AGPL-3.0-only for 180 days and then also becomes available under Apache-2.0, while members of the project’s Joint Industry Project can buy a commercial licence that allows use before the change date; the filer says AGPL section 13 makes current releases unusable for the proprietary integrators and OEMs that ship bridge software, that safety fixes reach Apache users six months late, that per-commit change dates break the standardisation OpenBridge was meant to provide and that the commercial terms are not public. Maintainer tibnor replied that the non-profit project chose the partly open model after weighing fully Apache-2.0 development against a closed, members-only repository, and that commercial use is possible through minimum annual donations of 2,000 euros for small companies, 5,000 for medium and 10,000 for large, letting startups use the code free until they land a sale.
OpenBridge moves to delayed AGPL licensing and draws downstream pushback
A downstream integrator opened issue #1349 on the Ocean Industries Concept Lab's OpenBridge web components repository arguing that the licence switch from Apache-2.0 to a delayed-open model was merged as a "chore" on 2026-09-17 without announcement, deprecation window or discussion, and only became visible when the 2.0.0 stable release shipped under AGPL-3.0-only on 2026-09-29, since the 2.0.0-next.155 prerelease from 2026-09-16 was still Apache-2.0. Under the scheme documented in the project's README, every version and commit is licensed AGPL-3.0-only for 180 days and then also becomes available under Apache-2.0, while members of the project's Joint Industry Project can buy a commercial licence that allows use before the change date; the filer says AGPL section 13 makes current releases unusable for the proprietary integrators and OEMs that ship bridge software, that safety fixes reach Apache users six months late, that per-commit change dates break the standardisation OpenBridge was meant to provide and that the commercial terms are not public. Maintainer tibnor replied that the non-profit project chose the partly open model after weighing fully Apache-2.0 development against a closed, members-only repository, and that commercial use is possible through minimum annual donations of 2,000 euros for small companies, 5,000 for medium and 10,000 for large, letting startups use the code free until they land a sale.
Source: Github