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Lucenia Competitive Extraction License (LCEL)

Version 1.0 SPDX short identifier: LicenseRef-LCEL-1.0 Copyright © 2026 Lucenia, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Preamble​

Modern software is built through collaboration.

Lucenia believes developers should be free to study software, understand its design, contribute improvements, build integrations, and advance the state of the art.

However, the emergence of large-scale automated software extraction — including artificial intelligence, autonomous software agents, and future automated systems — has fundamentally changed how software can be copied and commercialized. The threat is no longer only line-for-line copying; it is the industrialized transfer of engineering knowledge — reading a repository, its designs, and its rationale, and synthesizing a competing implementation that never copies a single line.

This License is designed to encourage learning and collaboration while prohibiting the industrialized extraction of Lucenia's engineering investment — both the Software and the Engineering Knowledge embodied within it — for the purpose of creating competing commercial products.

This License is a source-available license and is not an Open Source Initiative (OSI) approved license. It governs the Software in whatever form you receive it. Lucenia publishes source for some components and Object Code only for others, and this License does not oblige it to publish source for any particular component — the grants in § 2 that operate on source are exercisable against source you have actually received.

1. Definitions​

Software means the source code, documentation, tests, examples, build scripts, configuration, specifications, and associated materials distributed under this License.

Competitive Product means a software product or hosted service that meets both of the following conditions:

a. it provides search, retrieval, vector-database, distributed-index, or knowledge-fabric functionality substantially similar to material functionality of the Software; and b. it is offered, marketed, licensed, or otherwise made available to third parties as a substitute for the Software or for a Lucenia commercial offering.

Both conditions must be met. For the avoidance of doubt, none of the following is a Competitive Product:

  • an application, agent, plugin, connector, SDK, or integration that uses the Software or its published APIs, however commercially successful;
  • a product whose search or retrieval functionality is incidental to a different primary purpose;
  • software operated solely for your own internal business operations and not made available to third parties; or
  • academic, research, educational, or security-research work.

Engineering Knowledge means the software architecture, algorithms, data structures, interfaces, APIs, distributed-systems designs, deployment models, operational procedures, implementation techniques, optimization strategies, engineering tradeoffs, design rationale, performance characteristics, testing methodologies, documentation, specifications, configuration patterns, and other technical know-how embodied within the Software (non-exhaustively enumerated in § 5.1). Lucenia considers this Engineering Knowledge to be a material component of the value protected by this License.

Derived Representation means any automated, intermediate, or transformed representation produced from the Software, including without limitation embeddings, vector indexes, semantic indexes, retrieval corpora, summaries, architectural analyses, implementation guides, generated specifications or design documents, prompts or prompt libraries, synthetic datasets, knowledge graphs, latent representations, and generated code (further described in § 5.5).

Competitive Extraction means any activity whose purpose is to reproduce, derive, automate, accelerate, facilitate, or materially assist the development of a Competitive Product through the use of the Software, any Derived Representation, or the Engineering Knowledge embodied therein — whether performed manually, collaboratively, algorithmically, or through automated systems (operative rule in § 5.2).

Object Code means the Software in compiled, executable, or otherwise machine-executable form, as distinct from its human-readable source form.

Official Binary means Object Code that Lucenia has built and published for the Software — including an executable, installer, archive, container image, or package — together with the license, copyright, and notice files Lucenia distributes alongside it, and identified by a checksum or signature Lucenia has published for it.

Commercial Feature means a capability of the Software that Lucenia has designated as requiring an Entitlement. A capability is a Commercial Feature only if it is (a) listed at https://gnarl.dev/licensing/commercial-features and (b) identified as such by the Software itself at the moment the capability is requested. A capability that fails either test is not a Commercial Feature, and this License grants its use freely.

Entitlement means a cryptographically signed grant issued by Lucenia that authorizes use of one or more Commercial Features, on stated terms and for a stated period.

Core Use means execution of the Software with no Commercial Feature active. Core Use is the default state of the Software. Core Use is never metered, never limited by count, never conditioned on identity, and never requires an Entitlement, an account, or network access of any kind.

2. Permitted Uses​

Subject to the restrictions below, you may:

  • View and study any portion of the Software whose source Lucenia has made available to you. Lucenia does not undertake to publish source for every component, and this License does not oblige it to; the grants in this bullet and the next are exercisable only against source you have actually received.
  • Compile and execute from source any portion of the Software whose source Lucenia has made available to you.
  • Download, install, and execute Official Binaries for Core Use, for any number of instances, nodes, peers, devices, or users, without registration, license key, or quantity limit. This grant stands on its own: a recipient of an Official Binary needs no access to source, no Entitlement, and no separate agreement in order to run it for Core Use.
  • Modify the Software for your own internal use, subject to § 4.6.
  • Evaluate the Software.
  • Conduct academic research.
  • Teach from the Software.
  • Submit contributions to Lucenia.
  • Build plugins, connectors, integrations, SDKs, and applications that use published Lucenia APIs.
  • Use AI-assisted development tools while working on Lucenia or software that interoperates with Lucenia.

2.1 Commercial Features​

A Commercial Feature requires a valid Entitlement covering it. Using one without such an Entitlement is outside the grant in § 2 and is a breach of § 4.6.

Four limits on that, which bound what Lucenia may ever place behind an Entitlement:

a. Quantity in Core Use is never a Commercial Feature. The number of instances, nodes, peers, devices, documents, indexes, queries, or users you run in Core Use is not, and may not become, a Commercial Feature. The grant above is unconditional as to count.

This does not prevent an Entitlement from stating the scope of the Commercial Features it grants — for example, how many role assignments a role-based access control feature may hold. A quantity internal to a Commercial Feature is a term of that feature. It is not a limit on Core Use, and it can never become one, because a capability absent from Core Use cannot be taken away from it.

b. Core Use requires no network. Verification of an Entitlement is performed locally, by checking a signature. The Software does not require Lucenia to be reachable in order to run, and Lucenia may not condition Core Use on contacting any server, including its own.

c. Expiry degrades; it does not destroy. When an Entitlement expires or is not renewed, the Software reverts to Core Use. Your data remains readable, your indexes remain intact, and no Official Binary ceases to function. Loss of an Entitlement is loss of a Commercial Feature, never loss of access to your own data.

d. The list is published and binding. Lucenia designates Commercial Features only by publishing them at the address in § 1. A capability already released under this License as Core Use may be designated a Commercial Feature only in a subsequent version of the Software, never retroactively for a version you already run — see § 15.

3. Community Contributions​

Lucenia welcomes community contributions.

Nothing in this License restricts:

  • bug fixes
  • documentation improvements
  • performance improvements
  • security improvements
  • connectors
  • integrations
  • extensions
  • plugins

Contributions intentionally submitted to Lucenia may be incorporated into future commercial or community releases.

4. Prohibited Uses (Conditions of the License Grant)​

The restrictions in this Article are conditions on the permission this License grants: they limit the scope of your right to use the Software, so exceeding them is both a breach of this License and unauthorized use of the Software itself.

Without prior written permission from Lucenia, you may not:

4.1 Public Redistribution​

Redistribute the Software or modified versions of the Software.

Exception — verbatim redistribution of Official Binaries. Notwithstanding the foregoing, you may copy and redistribute an Official Binary, provided that:

a. it is unmodified and complete, and any checksum or signature Lucenia published for it still verifies. Repackaging for a package manager, container registry, or distribution repository is permitted so long as the Official Binary itself is carried through unaltered; b. this License and all copyright, attribution, and notice files accompany it; c. you do not state or imply that your distribution is endorsed by, supported by, or originates from Lucenia, beyond accurately identifying the Official Binary as Lucenia's — § 4.5 continues to govern trademark use; d. you charge no fee for the Official Binary itself. A fee for a service, medium, or bundle that merely includes it is not a fee for the Official Binary; and e. you comply with § 4.3, § 4.4, and Article 5. Redistributing an Official Binary never permits Competitive Extraction, nor operating a Competitive Product.

This exception exists so that Official Binaries may travel through the ordinary channels software travels through — package managers, container registries, distribution repositories, and an organization's own internal artifact mirrors — without each of those requiring separate written permission.

It does not grant OEM, embedding, or resale rights: distributing an Official Binary as a component of a product you commercialize remains subject to § 8.

4.2 Public Forks​

Publish or distribute public forks of the Software.

4.3 Competitive Products​

Develop, market, license, sell, distribute, or operate a Competitive Product substantially derived from the Software.

4.4 Hosted Services​

Offer the Software or modified Software as a hosted search platform, retrieval platform, vector database, AI infrastructure platform, SaaS product, cloud service, managed service, or API intended to compete with Lucenia.

4.5 Trademark Use​

Use Lucenia trademarks, branding, logos, or product names without permission.

4.6 Circumvention of Entitlement Verification​

Disable, bypass, remove, patch out, emulate, forge, tamper with, or otherwise circumvent the Software's verification of an Entitlement; substitute a signing key of your own for Lucenia's; or use a Commercial Feature without a valid Entitlement covering it.

This is the one modification internal use does not permit. The permissions in § 2 to modify the Software for your own internal use, and in § 7 for internal business operations, do not extend to this Article. They are otherwise unaffected by it: you may still modify the Software freely for any purpose that leaves Entitlement verification intact.

This Article restricts one thing only. It does not limit Core Use, it does not limit quantity, and it does not require you to be reachable, identified, or online — see § 2.1(a) and § 2.1(b), which bound it.

5. Protection of Engineering Knowledge (Covenants)​

This Article is the heart of this License. The restrictions below are covenants — binding promises you make in exchange for access to the Software — rather than conditions of the copyright grant. The framing is deliberate: copyright protects the expression of ideas, not ideas themselves, so these protections operate as a matter of contract, limiting how you may use the Software and any Derived Representation of it, and do not assert ownership over abstract knowledge. Their enforceability therefore depends on your acceptance of this License — see the "Legal architecture" note in the README.

5.1 Engineering Knowledge​

The Software embodies substantial engineering investment beyond its literal source code, including, without limitation:

  • software architecture;
  • algorithms;
  • data structures;
  • interfaces;
  • APIs;
  • distributed systems designs;
  • deployment models;
  • operational procedures;
  • implementation techniques;
  • optimization strategies;
  • engineering tradeoffs;
  • design rationale;
  • performance characteristics;
  • testing methodologies;
  • documentation;
  • specifications;
  • configuration patterns; and
  • other technical know-how embodied within the Software (collectively, "Engineering Knowledge").

Lucenia considers this Engineering Knowledge to be a material component of the Software and the value protected by this License.

5.2 Competitive Extraction​

You may not use the Software, or any Derived Representation of the Software, for the purpose of developing or facilitating the development of a Competitive Product ("Competitive Extraction").

Competitive Extraction is prohibited regardless of whether it is performed manually, collaboratively, algorithmically, or through automated systems, and regardless of whether the resulting product reproduces the Software's source code verbatim.

5.3 Knowledge Extraction​

Without limiting the foregoing, you shall not use the Software to extract, derive, encode, summarize, model, represent, capture, or otherwise transform Engineering Knowledge for use in the development of a Competitive Product. Prohibited activities include, without limitation:

  • creating implementation summaries;
  • generating architectural descriptions;
  • generating technical specifications;
  • producing design documents;
  • generating implementation plans;
  • creating engineering playbooks;
  • generating source code intended to reproduce the Software;
  • generating derivative implementations;
  • producing implementation guidance substantially derived from the Software;
  • creating datasets derived from the Software;
  • creating synthetic training data derived from the Software;
  • creating prompts or prompt libraries derived from the Software;
  • generating architectural diagrams intended to reproduce the Software;
  • creating knowledge bases whose purpose is implementing functionality substantially similar to the Software; or
  • otherwise extracting Engineering Knowledge for the purpose of creating a Competitive Product.

5.4 Automated Systems​

The foregoing restrictions expressly apply to the use of the Software with:

  • artificial intelligence systems;
  • machine learning systems;
  • large language models;
  • autonomous software agents;
  • retrieval-augmented generation systems;
  • code generation systems;
  • software engineering agents;
  • vector databases;
  • embedding systems;
  • knowledge graphs;
  • automated reasoning systems; and
  • any successor or substantially similar technologies.

5.5 Intermediate Representations​

You may not create or use any Derived Representation of the Software for the purpose of Competitive Extraction. Derived Representations include, without limitation:

  • embeddings;
  • vector representations;
  • semantic indexes;
  • retrieval corpora;
  • architectural summaries;
  • implementation summaries;
  • prompt collections;
  • synthetic datasets;
  • knowledge graphs;
  • latent representations;
  • generated documentation;
  • engineering specifications; or
  • any other representation that materially captures Engineering Knowledge embodied within the Software.

5.6 Commercial AI Development​

Without Lucenia's prior written permission, the Software may not be used to:

  • train machine learning models;
  • fine-tune foundation models;
  • optimize software engineering models;
  • improve automated code generation systems;
  • construct retrieval corpora intended for software generation;
  • evaluate competing software engineering systems using the Software as reference material; or
  • otherwise improve automated systems whose output is intended to develop or materially assist a Competitive Product.

5.7 Permitted Uses​

Nothing in this Article prohibits:

  • reading and studying the Software;
  • academic research;
  • education;
  • security research;
  • debugging;
  • interoperability;
  • contributing improvements to Lucenia;
  • using AI-assisted development tools while contributing to Lucenia or software that interoperates with Lucenia; or
  • ordinary software development that does not constitute Competitive Extraction.

5.8 Guiding Principle​

Lucenia encourages developers to learn from the Software, contribute to the Software, and build with the Software.

This License does not permit using the Software as raw material for industrialized knowledge extraction or the development of competing commercial software.

Innovation is encouraged. Competitive extraction is not.

6. Fair Use​

Nothing in this License prohibits:

  • academic discussion;
  • criticism;
  • interoperability;
  • security research;
  • performance benchmarking;
  • responsible vulnerability disclosure;
  • citation of the Software in publications;
  • development of software that interoperates with Lucenia through documented interfaces.

7. Internal Use​

Organizations may modify the Software for their own internal business operations, subject to § 4.6. Internal use is not a defence to circumventing Entitlement verification; it is the permission § 4.6 carves that single exception out of.

Internal modifications may not be redistributed or commercialized except under a separate written agreement with Lucenia.

8. Commercial Licensing​

Commercial deployment, redistribution, OEM licensing, SaaS offerings, managed services, or other commercial uses require a commercial agreement with Lucenia unless otherwise expressly authorized.

9. Patent Rights​

No patent rights are granted except as expressly provided in a separate written agreement.

10. Termination​

10.1 Notice and cure​

If you breach this License, Lucenia will give you written notice describing the breach. Your rights under this License terminate thirty (30) days after that notice unless you have cured the breach within that period. A breach is cured when the violating activity has ceased and, so far as reasonably possible, its effects have been undone.

10.2 Breaches that do not receive a cure period​

The cure period in § 10.1 does not apply to a breach of § 4.3, § 4.4, § 4.6, or Article 5 that you commit knowingly, or that you continue after becoming aware of it. Rights terminate on notice in those cases.

10.3 Reinstatement​

If you cure a breach within the period in § 10.1, your rights are reinstated as of the cure. Rights terminated under § 10.2 may be reinstated only by Lucenia in writing.

10.4 Downstream recipients​

Termination of your rights does not terminate the rights of anyone who received an Official Binary from you in compliance with § 4.1, for so long as that recipient remains in compliance. A mirror's breach does not strip everyone who downloaded from it.

10.5 Survival​

Article 5, § 9, and §§ 11 through 16 survive termination of this License.

11. Warranty​

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.

12. Limitation of Liability​

IN NO EVENT SHALL LUCENIA BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES ARISING FROM USE OF THE SOFTWARE.

13. Governing Law​

This License shall be governed by the laws of the State of Texas, without regard to conflict-of-law principles.

14. Severability​

If any provision of this License is held invalid, unenforceable, or preempted, that provision shall be construed and enforced to the maximum extent permissible, and the remaining provisions shall remain in full force and effect.

In particular, the covenants in Article 5 and the conditions on the grant in Article 4 are intended to stand independently of one another. If any part of Article 5 is held unenforceable — in whole or in part, or as to any category of activity — the remainder of Article 5 and all of Articles 1 through 4 and 6 through 16 remain in effect and enforceable.

15. License Versions​

Lucenia may publish revised versions of this License, each bearing a distinguishing version number.

The version accompanying a particular copy of the Software governs that copy. A new version does not retroactively alter the terms under which you received the Software, and you are never required to accept a later version for a copy you already hold. Software you obtain after a new version is published is governed by the version accompanying it.

16. General​

16.1 Entire agreement​

This License is the entire agreement between you and Lucenia concerning the Software and supersedes any prior or contemporaneous understanding concerning it. Where you and Lucenia have entered a separate written agreement signed by Lucenia — including a commercial agreement under § 8 — that agreement controls to the extent of any conflict.

16.2 No waiver​

Lucenia's failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of that provision or of any other, and is not a waiver of any later breach.

16.3 Assignment​

You may not assign or transfer this License, in whole or in part, without Lucenia's prior written consent, except to a successor to substantially all of your business or assets who agrees in writing to be bound by this License. Any other purported assignment is void. Lucenia may assign this License freely.

16.4 Successors​

This License binds and benefits the parties and their permitted successors and assigns.

Guiding Principles​

This License is based upon three principles:

Learn Freely​

Developers should be able to inspect, understand, research, teach, and improve the Software.

Build With Lucenia​

Developers are encouraged to extend, integrate with, and contribute to the Lucenia ecosystem.

Don't Extract Lucenia​

The Software is not provided as raw material for creating competing commercial products through systematic manual or automated extraction of Lucenia's engineering investment.

Competitive innovation is encouraged. Competitive extraction is not.

Philosophy​

Lucenia believes that modern software contains value beyond its literal source code. The architecture, engineering decisions, implementation techniques, operational knowledge, and accumulated design rationale embodied within the Software represent substantial intellectual investment.

This License reflects a covenant rather than a mere list of prohibitions: we will show you how we built it, and in return you agree not to use that transparency — or any representation derived from it — to industrialize the creation of a competing product.

That is a different philosophy than MIT or Apache. Those licenses govern distribution. This License governs extraction. It exists because, in an era where a repository and its design documents can be indexed and handed to an automated agent with the prompt "build me this," the line that matters is no longer copying versus not copying — it is learning versus extracting.