The Loam Licence

One licence per production site: use it, read it, change it, build for clients — and keep the engine where it is. Version 1.1.

Version 1.1 — 20 October 2026. The licence itself travels with every release, as .loam/docs/LICENCE.md; this page is that text, with what each condition means in practice.

The licence

Copyright © 2025–2026 Joey den Braven, trading as Braaf - codes en creaties, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Permission is hereby granted to any business or organisation, acting in the course of a trade, business or profession, obtaining a copy of this software (the "Software", the loam engine under .loam/) to use, copy and modify the Software, and to permit the persons working for or on its behalf — its staff, contractors and agents — to do so on its installation, subject to the following conditions:

  1. Don't plagiarize. The above notice and this licence shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
  2. One installation. This licence covers one installation: the Software may be actively installed in no more than one production environment at a time — one site root on one host. Every further production installation needs a licence of its own from the licensor. Development, staging and local copies that serve that same installation are not counted.
  3. No redistribution. The Software, or a modified Software, may not be distributed to anyone who does not operate that installation — including by bundling it in a theme, a plugin, a product or a hosting offer for third parties. Building and running sites for others, each on its own licensed installation, is permitted.
  4. Don't mess with the licensing features. The Software's licensing and integrity features — the verification of signed releases, the anchor, the licence key and update eligibility — shall not be altered or circumvented in any way. A modification of the Software is the licensee's to carry: a release replaces the Software whole.
  5. Lawful use. The Software shall not be used to violate applicable law or to infringe the rights of others. What an installation publishes, receives and keeps, and who holds a key to it, is the licensee's responsibility; the Software sends none of it to the licensor.
  6. Payment. Amounts owed for a licence or for updates are due upon notice, prompt, reminder or similar message from the licensor. Updates and support are governed by the Update Service Terms and the Support Policy; without them, an installation keeps running at its release.

Private, non-commercial use on one's own machine — a local copy, a copy in Bedrock, without a production installation — is permitted to anyone under conditions 1, 3, 4 and 5; it comes without updates or support.

Failure to comply with any of the conditions above will automatically and immediately terminate the permission granted hereby for the installation concerned. The licensee's own site — its content, theme, assets, guide, actors and records — is unaffected by termination.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. THE LICENSEE BEARS ALL RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE SOFTWARE AND OF ANY MODIFICATION MADE OR OBTAINED TO IT, INCLUDING LIABILITY FOR ACTUAL AND CONSEQUENTIAL HARM SUCH AS LOSS OR CORRUPTION OF DATA AND ANY NECESSARY SERVICE, REPAIR OR CORRECTION. TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL THE LICENSOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR ITS USE, AND THE LICENSOR'S TOTAL LIABILITY SHALL NOT EXCEED THE AMOUNTS PAID TO THE LICENSOR UNDER THIS LICENCE AND THE UPDATE SERVICE TERMS IN THE TWELVE MONTHS PRECEDING THE CLAIM.

Nothing in this licence limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including liability under product-liability law for damage to natural persons. This licence is governed by the laws of the Netherlands; disputes are brought before the competent court of Rotterdam, without prejudice to mandatory rules on jurisdiction. The licence that comes with a release applies to that release.

Who it is for

The licence is granted to a business or organisation — a company, a sole trader, a foundation, a municipality — acting in the course of its trade, business or profession. Everyone working for it or on its behalf may work on its installation under that one licence: staff, contractors, and agents. An AI agent holding a key to your site is such a person acting on your behalf; it needs no licence of its own.

Private use is free, and the licence says so. A blank site on your own machine, a copy in the Bedrock desktop app, a site you play with — no production installation, no updates or support, and nothing in them checks on you.

One installation

An installation is one site root on one host: the folder with your data, theme, assets and guide, and the engine beside it. That is the unit the engine itself knows, so it is the unit the licence counts. A second production site is a second installation, under its own licence.

Copies that serve that same site do not count: a development copy on a developer's machine, a staging copy, a Bedrock copy, a backup. Make as many as you need.

Reading and modifying

The engine is plain PHP on your host, and it is meant to be read. You may modify it for your own installation — at your own risk. A release replaces the engine's members whole, so a modification is yours to carry and is gone at the next update; loam health reports the difference. The one thing you may not touch is the trust chain: the verification of signed releases, the anchor, the key and what it may pull. That chain is also your site's security boundary, which is why it is a condition and not a tip.

Building sites for others

An agency may build and run sites for its clients and charge what it sees fit, each site on its own licensed installation. What the licence does not allow is passing the engine on: bundling it in a theme, a plugin or a product, or offering it as hosting to third parties.

That line is steering, not a lock. A platform that wants to roll out loam sites for its own clients asks for an addendum, and an addendum names a purpose — the one variable; the rest is fixed. Under it every client site is still an installation, the platform holds the licence, carries the client relationship, and gets from Braaf what every licensee gets.

Your site is yours — and your responsibility

Loam is a tool. Everything in the site that is not the engine — content, theme, assets, guide, actors, keys, journal and inbox — is yours without condition, readable without loam, and untouched if the licence ever ends. With it comes the responsibility: for what you publish and that it is yours to publish; for what your site receives and keeps, and your duties under data-protection law towards the people it concerns; for who holds a key — every key acts with the rights you gave it, and the journal names that actor, not Braaf; for the themes you serve, which are PHP running on your host with your rights; for your host, its security, backups and the mirror you push snapshots to; and for anything you build on top with third parties, such as a payment provider, under their terms.

Braaf processes no data of your site. The engine sends no content, visitor data, logs or telemetry anywhere. The update service knows your key, your anchor and which release you pulled, and nothing else. If you need a statement to that effect for your records, ask and you get one. More in Trust and privacy.

Updates, support and payment

The licence is perpetual: what you run keeps running, whether or not you pay for anything further. What you pay for is the update stream — a term of signed releases per installation, under the Update Service Terms. Security fixes stay free for every supported line, under the Support Policy. Running loam license is the moment you accept all three; your site writes that line in its journal.

Warranty and liability

The engine comes as it is, and the risk of running it is yours — the usual shape for software you host yourself, and the honest one: Braaf does not see your host, your theme or your data. Liability is capped at what you paid Braaf under the licence and the update terms in the twelve months before a claim: nothing paid, nothing owed. What the law does not allow to be limited — product liability for harm to natural persons, above all — is not limited. Dutch law applies; the court of Rotterdam decides, where the law lets us choose.

A product of Braaf

Loam is made and licensed by Joey den Braven, trading as Braaf - codes en creaties, Rotterdam. Loam is a product, not an organisation: the name on the licence, on the signing key and on the invoice is Braaf. A later version of this licence applies to the releases that carry it; the release you run stays under the licence it came with.