Commercial licensing

Free for people. Licensed for companies.

Goel° is source-available and free forever for personal use — and free for charities, schools and public bodies too, because the licence grants that outright. A paid licence is for commercial use: a business, a contractor billing clients, a product or service you sell, a corporate fleet. Indicative prices are published below, and every enquiry gets a human reply within one business day.

No telemetry, ever No licence keys No activation server No feature gating Source available

01 · Eligibility

Do I need a licence?

The test is the nature of the use, not the type of organisation. If the use is not directed toward commercial advantage or monetary compensation, the licence already grants it — free, no permission needed. That is why charities, schools and public bodies are on the free side. A paid licence is for use that serves a business.

FreeNo payment, no permission needed
  • You, on your own personal Mac or Linux box
  • Hobby projects, home labs and home servers
  • Students and personal academic work (your own coursework, thesis or research)
  • Personal media, archives, backups and self-hosting
  • Charities and non-profits — including paid staff and IT-managed machines
  • Schools, colleges, universities and public research organisations, as institutions
  • Government institutions, and public safety, health or environmental protection bodies
  • Evaluating Goel° before buying — take as long as you need, no clock
  • Reading, modifying and rebuilding the source for any use on this side

The one-line rule: Goel° is released under PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0. It permits any purpose that is not intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or monetary compensation, and its Noncommercial Organizations clause permits charitable, educational, public research, public safety, health, environmental protection and government institutions outright — regardless of how they are funded. We do not charge for anything that licence already gives you. A commercial licence covers the uses that fall outside it, and replaces the public terms with ones your legal team can sign. Genuinely unsure which side you fall on? Ask — the honest answer is free and fast.

What we will never do: there is no trial clock, no licence key to enter, no activation call home and no locked features. The build a paying enterprise runs is byte-for-byte the build a student runs. Compliance is on your honour — and on your auditors — not on a kill switch we hold. That is a deliberate product decision, and it will not change.

02 · Pricing

What does it cost?

Published so you can put a number in a budget request today, without waiting on a sales call. Final pricing is confirmed in a written quote.

Personal

Freeforever · no account

Individuals, students, hobbyists and home labs — plus charities, schools and public bodies, which the licence already covers at no cost.

  • Every feature, no limits
  • Full source on GitHub
  • Community support via GitHub issues
  • Automatic updates via Sparkle

Business

from ~$10–20per seat · perpetual licence

Teams and companies up to roughly 250 seats. One-off payment; the version you buy is yours to keep and run indefinitely.

  • Signed commercial licence agreement
  • Invoice, PO and bank transfer accepted
  • Email support, 2 business days
  • 12 months of updates included
  • Compliance pack (SBOM, security questionnaire)
  • Volume discounts from 25 seats

Enterprise

from ~$50per seat · per year

Regulated, audited and large-fleet deployments, billed annually per seat, plus the artefacts procurement and IT need to deploy at scale.

  • Everything in Business
  • MDM configuration profile (Jamf / Intune)
  • Audit logging build options
  • SSO for the web portal
  • VPAT / accessibility conformance report
  • Named contact, 1 business day, escalation path
  • Security review and questionnaire turnaround

Indicative, not a quote. These are the ranges most deals land in. Volume pricing, multi-year terms, reduced rates for the commercially directed work of an academic or non-profit institution, and currency other than USD are all available on request. Nothing here is an offer or a contract — the written quote is.

03 · Entitlements

What do I actually get?

The software is identical in every column — this table is about paperwork, support and the deployment artefacts, which is what a paid licence really buys.

Entitlements by licence tier
Entitlement Personal Business Enterprise
Full feature set, no gatingYesYesYes
Source code accessYesYesYes
Signed licence agreementPublic licenceYesYes, negotiable
Right to use for commercial purposesNoncommercial onlyYesYes, licensed per seat
Invoice / PO / bank transferYesYes
W-9, VAT ID, supplier onboardingYesYes
Support channelGitHub issuesEmailNamed contact
First-response SLABest effort2 business days1 business day
Escalation pathYes, documented
Update entitlementLatest public12 monthsTerm of licence
Security-patch notificationPublic release notesDirect emailDirect email, pre-disclosure
SBOM (SPDX-style)PublishedPublishedPublished + per-release
Security questionnaire answersPublishedPublishedCustom questionnaire completed
MDM configuration profileJamf / Intune
Audit loggingYes
SSO for the web portalYes
VPAT / accessibility reportYes
Telemetry / phone-homeNoneNoneNone

Items marked Enterprise-only are delivered as part of an Enterprise agreement; some are built to order against your environment. Ask for current availability in your quote — we will tell you plainly what exists today and what is roadmap.

04 · Response

How fast will you hear back?

One person reads every enquiry. No lead-routing queue, no qualification call before you get a number.

1Business day

First human reply to any licensing enquiry, including a rough number if you gave us seat count and country.

3Business days

Formal written quote, draft licence agreement and the compliance pack, ready for your legal and procurement teams.

5Business days

Completed custom security questionnaire or vendor-risk form, if your process needs one.

05 · Enquiry

Request a quote

Six fields. Everything except the message is used to price the quote accurately the first time, so we do not have to email you back asking for it.

Machines or people who will run Goel°. An estimate is fine.
Determines tax treatment and the contracting entity.

Goes to one inbox and is used only to answer you. No CRM, no newsletter, no third-party trackers on this page. See the privacy policy.

Form blocked, or you would rather just write? Email licensing@vinitk.dev with your organisation, seat count, country and intended use — the same four things the form asks for.

06 · Procurement FAQ

The questions buyers actually ask

Does Goel° send any data anywhere?

No. There is no analytics, no crash reporting, no usage tracking and no licence check-in. The only outbound connections the app makes are the transfers you start and the update check (Sparkle / GitHub Releases), which can be switched off in Settings. Downloads go directly from your machine to the server, peer or tracker you chose — nothing is relayed through us. This is verifiable in the source, and it is written into the commercial agreement as a warranty.

Where are credentials stored?

Site logins, SFTP passwords and portal credentials are stored in the macOS Keychain, never in plaintext config. The web-portal password is stored only as a salted PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256 digest (210,000 iterations), so a leaked settings file does not disclose it. Full detail is in the security questionnaire.

Can we pay by invoice / purchase order?

Yes, for Business and Enterprise. Bank transfer, PO reference on the invoice, and the usual supplier-onboarding paperwork (W-9 or local equivalent, VAT ID, bank details on letterhead) are all supported. Net-30 is standard; longer terms are negotiable for Enterprise.

Is the licence perpetual or a subscription?

Business is a perpetual per-seat licence with 12 months of updates: when the update window ends, you keep running everything you have, you just stop receiving new versions until you renew. Enterprise is an annual per-seat subscription: updates and support run for as long as the term does, and the licence ends when you stop renewing.

What counts as a seat?

One named user or one managed machine, whichever is easier for you to count. Rebuilding a laptop, or a user replacing their machine, does not consume a new seat. We do not audit seat counts technically — there is nothing in the software that could.

We are a non-profit / school. Do we really have to pay?

Almost certainly not. PolyForm Noncommercial names charitable organisations, educational institutions, public research organisations, public safety and health organisations, environmental protection organisations and government institutions as permitted uses outright — regardless of funding, paid staff or IT-managed machines. You do not need a licence from us and you do not need to ask. The exception is genuinely commercial activity run out of such an organisation, such as a spin-out company or a service sold to customers; reduced rates apply there and are granted routinely.

Can we evaluate before buying?

Yes, and there is no clock on it. Download the public build and run it. Evaluation inside a company is explicitly permitted for a reasonable assessment period; when you decide to keep it in production, that is when the licence is needed.

What about the third-party components?

Goel° bundles libtorrent-rasterbar, Boost, OpenSSL, libssh2, GRDB.swift and Sparkle, all under permissive licences (BSD-3-Clause, BSL-1.0, Apache-2.0, MIT). There is no copyleft component in the shipped binary. The full list with versions and licence texts is in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md and the SPDX-style SBOM.

Can it run air-gapped?

Yes. Disable the update check and the app makes no connection it was not told to make. The headless Linux daemon and the local web portal work entirely on your own network.

How are security issues handled?

Report privately to the security contact; you get an acknowledgement within one business day and a fix or mitigation plan within five. Business and Enterprise licensees are emailed directly when a security release ships; Enterprise licensees get pre-disclosure where the issue affects them. See support-sla.md.

What happens if you stop maintaining it?

The source is public and your licence is perpetual (Business) or runs to term (Enterprise), so nothing you have deployed stops working. Source-escrow arrangements can be written into an Enterprise agreement if your risk process requires one.