Liminal ships under FSL-1.1-MIT (Fair Source License): you can read, run, and modify the harness now; each release version converts to MIT after two years. This post explains why that matters for AI agent software in 2026.
License summary: /liminal/license. Source: github.com/traidy2222/liminal-ai.
What you can do today
- Clone, build, and run the full agent (TUI + web)
- Audit tool dispatch, memory, and safety code — not a hosted black box
- Fork for internal workflows (respecting FSL use limitations on competing hosted services — see license text)
- Contribute fixes and extensions
Community Edition does not require a paid seat to run the harness.
What “fair source” adds vs MIT-on-day-one
Pure MIT from v1 lets anyone immediately ship a hosted clone of your R&D with no recapture period. FSL delays that for 24 months per release, giving the studio room to fund development while still guaranteeing eventual open compatibility.
For developers evaluating tools, the practical effect is:
- No subscription to read the agent code
- Predictable conversion — older releases become MIT on a calendar schedule
- Alignment — sustainable agent harness work without hiding the implementation
How this pairs with local-first architecture
Fair source plus local execution means enterprises can:
- Run air-gapped with Ollama
- Keep
.agent_sessions/and vault markdown inside their boundary - Review
run_shellapproval paths in source
License does not replace your LLM provider terms — API traffic is still governed by OpenRouter/Anthropic/etc.
Not the same as “open weights”
Liminal is agent orchestration software, not a foundation model. Model licenses are separate. The harness is model-agnostic by design.
Compare to proprietary agents
| Liminal (FSL) | Typical SaaS agent | |
|---|---|---|
| Source visible | Yes | No |
| Runs offline harness | Yes | Rare |
| Per-seat for software | No (CE) | Yes |
Comparison table
See Cursor and Claude Code comparisons for product shape, not license family.
Enterprise
Enterprise features and support are documented separately; license conversion schedule still applies to the open releases.