Editions
kumbuka follows an open-core model: a complete, free, open-source core, with a planned commercial path for organizations that need more. This page states the boundary honestly — what the Community Edition is today, and what the commercial path adds — without overclaiming.
The product is pre-beta. The commercial path below describes intended direction. It is not generally available, and this page lists no prices and no dates.
Community Edition (this repository’s subject)
Section titled “Community Edition (this repository’s subject)”The Community Edition is the OSS, self-hosted, single-tenant, atomic memory core — and it is free.
- Self-hosted — you run the Docker Compose stack on your own infrastructure (Quickstart).
- Single-tenant — one team per deployment.
- The atomic memory core — the full memory model: the six-type entry
taxonomy,
global/project/privatescopes, the fivememory_*MCP tools, the admin console, and the private-memory guarantee enforced at the data-access layer. - Licensed AGPL-3.0 — see Licensing.
The private guarantee is not an edition-gated feature. It is part of the core and is present in the Community Edition exactly as described in Security & privacy.
Commercial path (planned)
Section titled “Commercial path (planned)”For organizations that need capabilities beyond a single self-hosted team, a commercial path is planned. Stated plainly, without availability claims:
| Capability | What it is |
|---|---|
| Multi-tenancy | Many isolated teams on one deployment. The single-tenant core already carries the isolation seam for forward compatibility. |
| Context Documents | An extension beyond the atomic memory entries — richer, document-shaped context. |
| Moderation | An add-on for reviewing and governing shared memory at scale. |
| Hosted SaaS | A managed offering, so you don’t self-host. |
These are the commercial additions; the Community Edition does not include them. We will not imply they are shipped or hardened while the product is pre-beta.
Licensing
Section titled “Licensing”The Community Edition is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPL-3.0, ratified). Because kumbuka is deployed as a network service, AGPL §13 applies — running a modified version that users interact with over a network obliges you to offer them its corresponding source (see Security & privacy).
A commercial dual-license path is planned for organizations that cannot
operate under the AGPL or that want the commercial-edition features. Details,
terms, and availability are not yet published. [founder input]
For how this licensing interacts with contributions, see CONTRIBUTING.md.