Licensing FAQ

This page states the current licensing boundary for scpn-quantum-control. It is documentation for adopters and release reviewers; it does not change any licence grant.

Current Licence

The repository is published under AGPL-3.0-or-later, with a commercial licence route available for proprietary use. The package metadata, SPDX headers, README licence section, and LICENSE file must continue to agree before a release is tagged.

Common Routes

Use case	Route
Academic research, teaching, and AGPL-compatible open work	Use the AGPL-3.0-or-later terms in LICENSE.
Closed-source products, internal proprietary tools, SaaS, consulting deliverables, or embedded deployments	Obtain a commercial licence grant before distribution or network-service use.
Future lightweight Kuramoto-XY core package	Not available as a permissive package today.

Core-Split Boundary

The repository documents a possible future lightweight core boundary in core_package_boundary.md. That document is a planning boundary only. It does not relicense any file, package, symbol, backend, benchmark, or generated artefact.

A future permissive split requires a reviewed release decision that names the exact files, symbols, dependencies, SPDX headers, package metadata, and target licence. Until that happens, all in-repository code remains under the AGPL/commercial terms.

Release Gate

Run the license-readiness gate before a tag or licence-affecting change:

python tools/audit_license_readiness.py --root .

The gate checks:

• pyproject.toml project licence and classifiers;
• LICENSE, README, core-boundary, and this FAQ for consistent public wording;
• SPDX and commercial-licence headers on Python source, tool, and script files.

The release-readiness audit also includes the same gate:

python tools/audit_release_readiness.py --project-root . --fail-on-blocker

If the gate fails, do not tag or publish until the blocker is fixed or an approved licence-split release changes all affected surfaces in one reviewed commit.