ARC Open GovernanceLicensing
Free to use. Governed where it counts.
The code is open, and using it is free. Obligations begin only where a separately governed service begins.
The ARC reference implementation is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. The license permits use, copying, modification, and distribution, in source and in products, for personal and commercial purposes alike. No fee, registration, or entitlement is required to run the software, to stand up a node, or to build on the standard, and no volume of private use changes that.
Commercial use of the open ARC implementation remains permitted. Use of separately operated ARC Network services, protected VALIS-KORE implementations, or officially granted institutional privileges may require an independently verified entitlement and applicable agreement.
That rule draws the only line this page draws. A company that takes the open code and operates its own service from it is exercising the license, and it owes Arc Technologies no entitlement and no fee for doing so. What the license does not grant is the use of things that were never part of the licensed code.
What remains separately governed
Hosted network services
Services that Arc Technologies or the foundation operates for others, including hosted settlement, relay, and registry services, run under their own agreements. Using the open code to reach them is free. Being served by them is a contracted service.
Protected production implementations
VALIS-KORE in its production form is a protected implementation. Access to it, and to the settlement it performs for an institution, is granted by entitlement and agreement, never implied by the open release.
Certification and the names
The Apache license covers code, not names. The ΛRC and <_VΛLIS names are not licensed by it, and calling a system conformant, certified, or officially part of the ARC Network is a governed claim under the release's conformance terms, not a claim a fork may make for itself.
Contracted support
Support with obligations behind it, response commitments, and stewardship of a production deployment are contracted services. Community help stays what it has always been, freely given and freely received.
Governed network roles
Some roles on the network carry institutional privilege, among them settler and witness roles and any role that admits others. Holding such a role is an institutional grant, verified independently, and it is never earned by volume or bought as a product.
The postures carry no price
A node that stays dark owes nothing and is capped at nothing. A node that lists itself owes nothing and is capped at nothing. Private relational computation is never metered, on any node, at any volume. Money enters only at connection, and only for the specific contracted service a grant covers, whose ceiling travels with that grant and no further.
How an entitlement works
An entitlement is a signed object that names its holder, its issuer, the service it covers, and any ceiling that applies. The service being relied on verifies it independently, against the holder's key, before the gated act is accepted. A grant can be revoked, and revocation reaches the relying services before further gated acts are accepted. Public registry entries prove that a grant was issued or revoked without exposing the contract behind it.
Giving is a separate lane
Donations sustain the parts of this work that have no customer, and they stay entirely apart from licensing. A contribution is not a license, not an entitlement, and not a condition of using the software, standing up a node, or being listed. Giving stands on the support section of the main page.
Status, plainly. The entitlement framework is designed and recorded in the founding governance record. The issuer is not yet issuing, contracted services are not yet on sale, and nothing on this page is an offer. The full license text ships inside the founding release, and the names and conformance terms stand in its NOTICE and CONFORMANCE.md.