The System Initiative software is open source under the Apache license version 2.0. You can find the software on GitHub.
System Initiative is a product produced from the open source software, exclusively by System Initiative, Inc. It is distributed under our commercial terms.
Others are allowed to make their own distribution of the software, but they cannot use any of the System Initiative trademarks, cloud services, etc.
If you are familiar with how Red Hat works, System Initiative is very similar.
System Initiative is open source software under the Apache license version 2.0. This means that you are free to use the software as you wish: to solve your problems, to make improvements, to make money — whatever you like.
System Initiative, Inc. open-sources all of the System Initiative software. There are no special enterprise features. We are not open core.
Like you, the creators of the System Initiative software also want things out of it. We want a better way to do DevOps work. To work on transformative technology. We also want to build what we hope is a successful venture-backed startup. We do that by creating a commercial product called “System Initiative,” based on open source software. We retain the exclusive right to produce that “System Initiative”-branded product and services.
We also provide the space for a community to form around the software and our product. We welcome anyone to build on top of the software for whatever ends they desire.
System Initiative, Inc. is a venture-backed startup.
System Initiative is the product exclusively produced and distributed by System Initiative, Inc.
The System Initiative software is the open source software we leverage to create our product.
To understand this more fully, we need to talk about three important concepts: copyright, trademark, and patents. What follows is a (relatively) plain language summary, intended to give you a basic conceptual overview. To learn more, we recommend reading “Intellectual Property and Open Source” by Van Lindberg.
Copyright is easiest to understand as ownership over what you create. In general, when you make something yourself, you own the copyright. When you are employed or hired to create a work, the copyright for your work may belong to whomever engaged you, known as a “work made for hire”. Think of copyright as the lever you can use to determine whether others can use, copy, distribute or modify your work. By default, the answer is they cannot - it belongs to you, and nobody else can do these things. Open source licenses change that default, though, allowing others to do all of those things.
Patents are how we gain exclusivity over our inventions, allowing inventors to profit from them. If you patented a better mousetrap, you would be the only person who can build a mousetrap that particular way. Patents have two business uses: offensive and defensive. Offensive patents generate revenue from those who may infringe on the patent. Someone builds a mouse trap like yours, so you sue them for damages and extract a royalty payment from them. Defensive patents exist to protect us from patent litigation and are deployed only when needed. Open source licenses also grant patent licenses in addition to the copyright license.
Trademark is ownership of the brands you use for the product or service. Trademarks help consumers distinguish one product from another and trademark law ensures that this function is working properly for the consumers. When you put a product into the world, you own the trademark whether or not it is registered. Most companies also register their trademarks with various governments.
The trademark owner decides what product or services the brand will be used for and their qualities and characteristics. For example - there are many kinds of computers in the world, but only Apple can create a MacBook Pro. That's because “Apple” and “MacBook Pro” are trademarks owned by Apple. For a trademark to remain valid, the owner has to proactively ensure that the mark is associated only with the owner and no one else, or that it doesn’t become the generic name for the product, like “386,” a practice often called “policing the mark.” Notably different from copyrights and patents though, open source licenses do not grant a trademark license.
In our case, "System Initiative" and "SI" are both trademarks of System Initiative, Inc. They represent the product we produce, the name of the software we build, and the brand promise that comes with it. No person or entity is allowed to use our trademarks for products or services of their own. Our trademark policy provides more guidance on when your use of our trademarks is appropriate and when it is not. When in doubt, ask.
System Initiative, Inc. owned the copyright to System Initiative (the software) initially, as we paid all the developers who created it. Everyone who contributes to the System Initiative software — our open source project — keep their copyright, licensing it to the world under the Apache License 2.0. When someone contributes on behalf of a company or some other kind of organization, they are responsible for securing permission to license their work under the Apache license for use in the System Initiative software.
Under the terms of the Apache 2.0 License, every contributor also grants a limited patent license. Any patented code contributed is automatically covered. In the case of an offensive patent infringement suit brought against an implementation of the software, everyone else’s patent licenses to the patent aggressor are revoked. Think of this like a children's birthday party - if you can’t play nice with the other children, you don’t get to stay at the party. Should anyone bring a patent lawsuit, they lose their ability to use everyone else’s patents.
To summarize how things work:
You are not allowed to distribute software that includes any of the System Initiative, Inc. trademarks. A distribution of the software means a package or service that can be consumed directly. For example, creating binary downloads, docker containers, running a software as a service, etc., are all "distributions" of the software. For more details of what you are and are not allowed to do with our marks, see the trademark policy.
When you create a distribution, you must remove all our visible trademarks from the product. For example, anywhere in the user interface that our logo appears, it must be removed or replaced with a different logo. Any written reference to the System Initiative or SI trademarks that are visible to an end user must be removed. You do not need to alter every place “System Initiative” or “SI” may appear in the source code - only places where an end user will see it (either on the web, or in a command line tool). For example, the 'si' command line tool must be renamed (it is customer facing), while functions using 'si' in the source code do not (they are not customer facing).
You may not imply in any way that System Initiative, Inc. has any relationship with your distribution, other than that your distribution contains some System Initiative source code. The build systems, quality control, telemetry, services, APIs and community infrastructure we have created are exclusively owned by System Initiative, Inc., and operated for the exclusive use of our customers. So you may not state, suggest or imply that your distribution is the same as ours, equivalent to ours, or performs the same functions in the same way as ours.
This framework provides a level playing field for everyone. For System Initiative, Inc. to be as successful as possible, the community around the software must be as open as possible. The software is equally available to everyone to use, modify and distribute.
Currently, there is only one distribution of System Initiative software. When the community decides to make a new distribution, we will collaborate on making it feasible to swap out our marks. Our goal is to work together on System Initiative software as the upstream.
You can make a build that includes our trademarks to develop System Initiative software itself. You may not publish or share the build, and you may not use that build to run System Initiative software for any other purpose.
To oversimplify: we sell System Initiative (the product) for money. If you want our product, you pay us for it.
We create a trusted, enterprise-grade product under the brand System Initiative. We contribute to the software. We guide its development. We create professional testing, build, and release processes. We package it for use. We offer it as a service. We provide support for our customers’ journey. We provide community infrastructure and sharing of content. We do all this, and more, in exchange for money.
We hope you make money! Making money is great. Here are a few ways to do that with us:
Contact sales@systeminit.com to learn more.
Then you are free to create your own distribution, services, and community infrastructure, just without using our trademarks or services. We will collaborate on the software with you in the System Initiative software repository.
You can use any services we provide to enable community collaboration: GitHub, Discord, etc.
You may not use services provided by System Initiative, Inc. as part of the product, such as authentication, package sharing, telemetry, build systems, automated testing, etc.
We will open-source the software we use to run these services for the benefit of our customers — but you will have to run them yourself. Or you can consider becoming a reseller, and support us in providing those services for the community.
That's okay! If you don't like any of this, there is a clear solution: fork the software and go your own way. We hope you'll still collaborate with us on the upstream. But if you don't, you don't. We believe in the value of open source, in community collaboration, and of our product. Your success will make the community stronger.