Licensing

Anahita's code is open source. How Anahita works is copyleft, so that it stays open wherever it is run; how to talk to it is permissive, so that anybody can build on it, in any language, under any licence.

Part	Licence	File
The services, anahita-libs, and everything else in this repository but the protocol definitions and the examples	GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 only (AGPL-3.0-only)	LICENSE (opens in a new tab)
The gRPC and protocol buffer definitions in anahita-libs/proto (22 .proto files), and the code generated from them	Apache License 2.0 (Apache-2.0)	anahita-libs/proto/LICENSE (opens in a new tab)
The examples in examples/, made to be copied	Apache License 2.0	examples/LICENSE (opens in a new tab)
The web app, anahita-web (opens in a new tab)	MIT	its LICENSE
The MCP server for the docs, anahita-mcp (opens in a new tab)	MIT	its LICENSE

Copyright 2008–2026 Rastin Mehr Design Studio Inc. (rmd studio). This page explains the licences; it is not legal advice, and the licence texts are what count.

Running a site

Nothing is owed for running Anahita as it comes: a school, a newsroom or a group of friends can install it, use it and charge for hosting it, and publish nothing.

A site that changes the services and lets people use them over the network must offer those people the source of its changed version, under the same licence (section 13 of the AGPL). A link to a public repository with the changes is enough. Changes kept to a developer's own machine or test server, used by nobody else, owe nothing. Settings (config.env, secrets.env) are not changes to the services, and the web app is under its own licence, MIT, so a site's theme and texts in it are its own.

Building on Anahita

What you build	What it may be
A client: a mobile app, a bot, a script, another web app, talking to the API	Any licence. It is a separate program
A service of your own that calls Anahita's services over gRPC, in any language, with code generated from the definitions	Any licence, open or closed: the definitions are Apache 2.0. See Services over gRPC
A service of your own that answers in place of one of Anahita's, from the same definitions	Any licence, for the same reason
A service that uses anahita-libs (its permissions, federation, entities, clients), or a changed copy of one of Anahita's services	AGPL-3.0, offered to the people who use it

The line runs between how to talk to Anahita, which anybody may use, and how Anahita works, which stays open wherever it runs: nobody can take Anahita's own code, change it, and run it closed for others.

The name and the logo

Neither licence grants the use of the name Anahita, a registered trademark of Rastin Mehr Design Studio Inc. in Canada, or of its logo, except to say where the software comes from. A site built with Anahita has its own name.

Other terms

rmd studio holds the copyright in all of Anahita's code, so it can license any of it on other terms, or more permissively later. None are offered today.