PlotBird Analytics is free software under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 or later (LICENSE). You can run it, study it, modify it, redistribute it and even sell services around it — as long as you respect the AGPL.
This file explains the one situation where the AGPL asks something extra of you, and what to do about it.
The AGPL is the GPL plus one clause (§13, "Remote Network Interaction"). In practice, for this project:
| You want to | What the AGPL asks |
|---|---|
| Install PlotBird on your own website or intranet | Nothing extra. Use it freely, keep your copy private if you like. |
| Modify it for yourself | Nothing extra, as long as you do not give the modified program to others as a network service. |
| Distribute it, modified or not | Keep the licence, publish the source of your changes. |
| Offer it to third parties as a hosted service (SaaS, agency panel, "analytics as a feature" of your product) | Offer those users the complete corresponding source code of the version you run — including your modifications. |
That last row is the whole point: nobody gets to take this project, close their changes and sell it as a service without giving the source back.
If the AGPL does not fit what you need to do — typically because you want to offer PlotBird as a closed hosted service, embed it in a proprietary product, or ship it with modifications you cannot publish — a separate commercial licence is available from the copyright holder. It replaces the AGPL for your organisation and removes the source-disclosure obligation.
Write to the address on the repository's public profile to discuss it. Please describe your use case and expected scale; there is nothing to sign for self-hosting under the AGPL.
MIT would let anyone take the code, keep their changes private and compete with the project as a hosted service, contributing nothing back. The AGPL keeps the project genuinely open while leaving a commercial path for organisations that need one. This is the same model Plausible uses.
Contributions are accepted under the terms in CONTRIBUTING.md: by submitting a change you agree to it being distributed under the AGPL, and you grant the maintainer the right to also license your contribution commercially. That is what keeps the dual-licensing model possible; without it, a single outside contributor would be enough to make commercial licensing impossible.
The AGPL covers the code. It does not grant any right to the name
"PlotBird Analytics" or the logo (assets/img/logo.svg).
Forks are welcome and explicitly allowed — but a fork must be renamed and must not present itself as the upstream project. You may state, factually, that your project is "based on PlotBird Analytics".
Bundled data and libraries keep their own licences and are listed in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md. In particular, the IP geolocation database is CC BY 4.0 and its attribution is shown in the application's settings page.