In order to safeguard the long-term innovation, sustainability, and collaborative spirit of NetBird, we are switching to the AGPLv3 license - ensuring it remains a powerful, community-driven resource for decades to come.
From our very first commit, NetBird’s mission has been to create an advanced, secure private networking platform that is both super-simple to use and accessible for organizations of all sizes and budgets. We believe that secure private networking is a fundamental right of every modern company. This belief is the foundation of our open-source-first philosophy, and we’re strengthening this with our move to AGPLv3 license.
Why We're Moving to AGPLv3: Reciprocity and Sustainability
After careful consideration, we believe that transitioning to the AGPLv3 license best fosters the balance of reciprocity and sustainability for NetBird.
The BSD-3 license, under which NetBird has operated until now, is a permissive license. It was instrumental in our early growth, offering maximum flexibility and encouraging wide adoption. However, this permissiveness also presents a significant long-term challenge with an imbalance where the value created by a community can be captured and privatized, ultimately undermining the sustainability of the open-source project itself. Well, AGPLv3 addresses this imbalance.
AGPLv3 establishes a level playing field; ensuring that if an organization modifies NetBird and offers that modified version as a service to the public, they are required to share the source code of their modifications under the same AGPL license.
What’s Changing; And, What’s Not?
What really changes:
- The root of the main netbirdio/netbird repo remains under BSD-3.
- The following three sub-folders in the main netbirdio/netbird repo will be licensed under AGPL-3.0 to better manage the license of the server-side components while keeping the client code BSD-3:
- The NetBird dashboard: https://github.com/netbirdio/dashboard is now AGPLv3
For self-hosters, internal use, absolutely nothing changes:
- You can continue to download, install, run, and manage NetBird on your own servers for your organization, your homelab, or any other personal purposes
- You are free to modify NetBird for your own internal use without any obligation to share those changes; as long as you do not provide the modified software as a service to other users/organizations over a network.
For Managed Service Providers (MSP) and Managed Security Service Providers (MSSP):
- You can continue to deploy, configure, and manage NetBird for your clients as part of your services.
- Setting up and maintaining a NetBird network for your clients is not the same as taking the NetBird source code, modifying it, and launching a competing multi-tenant SaaS product.
For Open Source Contributors:
- With AGPLv3 your contributions are now better protected within a strong copyleft framework, ensuring that your hard work cannot be taken proprietary by a third party.
- The AGPL guarantees that your contributions will always remain part of the open-source commons.
- We will also continue to use our Contributor License Agreement (CLA) . The CLA works in synergy with the AGPL to create a sustainable future for the project. It grants NetBird the right to re-license your contributions, which allows us to offer commercial licenses to enterprises.
For Cloud Users and Customers:
- Nothing changes.
- All client applications remain under BSD-3.
For Companies Building Competing Services:
- If you take the NetBird source code, modify it, and then offer a public, commercial, NetBird-like service to paying customers, the AGPLv3 requires you to release the source code of your modifications under the same license.
- This ensures fairness and reciprocity.
For Those Who Cannot Use AGPL
- Please reach out to us at sales@netbird.io . We can offer a commercial non-AGPLv3 license.
Timeline and Next Steps
We are committed to making this transition as smooth and transparent as possible.
Effective Date: The AGPLv3 license will officially apply to the NetBird codebase starting with our upcoming v0.53.0 release, which is scheduled for 5 August 2025.
Legacy Versions: All existing versions and binaries of NetBird released prior to v0.53.0 release will remain under the original BSD-3 license.
Repository Update: The LICENSE file in the main branch of our GitHub repository will remain under BSD-3 license and modified to reflect the AGPLv3 license for the specified sub-folders (management/, relay/, signal/) starting with the v0.53.0 release.
The folders management/, relay/, and signal/ will have their own LICENSE files that specify the AGPLv3 license.
The LICENSE file in the main branch of our dashboard repository will be updated to reflect the AGPLv3 license.
Past Contributions: This license change is not retroactive. All past contributions were made under the BSD-3 license and our CLA . The CLA gives us the right to re-license the collective work going forward, which is what enables this transition.
Join the Conversation
Transparency is one of our most important values, and this ‘license conversion’ conversation is no exception. We welcome your questions, feedback, and concerns.
Community Channels: For open discussion with the team and other community members, please join us on slack .
Contact Us Direct: For specific or private inquiries, particularly regarding commercial licensing options, please feel free to email us at legal@netbird.io
Live AMA: We will be hosting a live ‘Ask Me Anything’ (AMA) session with our founders, Misha Bragin and Maycon Santos, to discuss this change in detail and answer your questions directly. The session will be held on Thursday, 7 August 2025 via Zoom ( bookmark ) Zoom link to join the session). Please look for a separate announcement with connection details.