# Commercial and Licensing Lifecycle

> **The criterion.** The business realities: clear, business-friendly licensing (permissive, or copyleft with
> a clear commercial option), and vendor longevity — backing that ensures long-term patching, maintenance, and
> IP indemnity.

## How Revera answers it

Revera is **dual-licensed** with clean terms, made possible by clean ownership:

- **Noncommercial / evaluation — free**, under the [PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0](../../LICENSE):
  research, education, personal study, and evaluation. You may trial Revera for a commercial decision under
  this license.
- **Commercial / production — paid**, under a [commercial license](../../LICENSE-COMMERCIAL.md) from VIACERTO
  LLC: build it into products you sell with no obligation to open your source.

**VIACERTO LLC owns 100% of the kernel** — no third-party code — which is exactly what makes the dual license
clean and unambiguous. (The one vendored third-party component is the optional SEGGER SystemView trace backend
under `tools/SEGGER/`, used under SEGGER's own license and compiled only when you enable it — off by default.)
Contributions are accepted under a CLA that preserves this (see [CONTRIBUTING](../../CONTRIBUTING.md)).

Lifecycle: **[Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org)** with a [`VERSION`](../../VERSION) file and a
Keep-a-Changelog [`CHANGELOG.md`](../../CHANGELOG.md). Until 1.0.0 the API may change between minor versions;
the stable surface and its `[experimental]` exceptions are documented in the
[API reference](../reference/api.md).

## At a glance

| Aspect | Revera |
|---|---|
| Free tier | PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0 (research / education / evaluation) |
| Commercial tier | VIACERTO commercial license (ship closed-source products) |
| Third-party code | none in the kernel (100% VIACERTO-owned); optional SEGGER SysView backend vendored under SEGGER's license |
| Contribution terms | CLA (preserves the dual-license right) |
| Versioning | SemVer + `VERSION` + `CHANGELOG.md` |
| Vendor | VIACERTO LLC |

## Limits (honest)

- **Single-vendor**, not a foundation or a large community — backing is VIACERTO LLC, not a consortium.
- **0.1.0 is an experimental development release** — the API is not yet frozen at 1.0.0.
- Commercial **support, warranty, indemnity, and pricing** terms are set in the commercial agreement and are
  not published here; contact VIACERTO ([LICENSE-COMMERCIAL.md](../../LICENSE-COMMERCIAL.md)).

## Learn more

- [LICENSE](../../LICENSE) · [LICENSE-COMMERCIAL.md](../../LICENSE-COMMERCIAL.md) · [NOTICE](../../NOTICE) ·
  [CONTRIBUTING](../../CONTRIBUTING.md) · [CHANGELOG](../../CHANGELOG.md) · [release manifest](../release-manifest.md).