Our open source licenses
The hardware and software we produce are entirely released under open source licenses meaning they can be used in commercial products and remixed at will so long as the conditions of the licenses are followed. On this page we give an overview of the different open source licenses that we use and discuss what this means if you are wanting to use one of our products in your commercial product.
Table of contents
Audio boards
The below covers the following boards: Bela; Bela Mini; CTAG FACE and BEAST; Mini Multichannel Expander; Audio Expander; Multiplexer.
Hardware
The Bela hardware designs are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike 3.0 license (or CC-BY-SA), meaning that you can freely use these for your own projects provided you supply attribution and a link to this repo, and release your own design files under the same license. Read more about CC-BY-SA on the Creative Commons site.
You can find our hardware designs here.
Software
Core code
The Bela ‘core code’ is distributed under LGPL, the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL 3.0), available here: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-3.0.txt.
You can find our core code here.
The Bela IDE
The Bela IDE is licensed under GPL, the GNU General Public License, available here: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html
Using our boards in commercial products
Any boards bought from us or one of our official resellers can be resold inside a commercial product and treated like any other off-the-shelf electronic component. We offer discounts for bulk orders of our boards for commercial use; please email info@bela.io to discuss your needs. There are however licence restrictions on the use and modification of our hardware and software plans.
If you make any modifications to the core Bela hardware or software, those changes need to be released under the same open source terms once your product is released. Your own custom application code running inside the Bela environment should respect the LGPL license of the Bela core code. This means that you should either release your source code or, if you want to keep it private, link your executable dynamically to the Bela core code.
If you would like to keep changes made to the core code or hardware closed source then we can offer a commercial license for that.
There are some restrictions on using the trademarked Bela name and logo in your product, which means that your customers can not be given access to the Bela branded IDE through your product without our prior agreement.
Trill sensors
The below covers the following sensors and boards: Trill Bar; Trill Square; Trill Craft; Trill Hex; Trill Ring; Trill Flex; Trill Hub.
Hardware
All Trill hardware design files are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike 3.0 license (or CC-BY-SA), meaning that you can freely use these for your own projects provided you supply attribution and a link to this repo, and release your own design files under the same license. Read more about CC-BY-SA on the Creative Commons site.
You can find the Trill hardware designs here.
Software
Firmware
Trill firmware is the code that’s flashed to each Trill sensor which can be found here. Trill firmware is licensed under the GNU Public License, or GPL found here. This means that you can use this code for any purpose, but you must push the changes you make back to this repo.
Trill libraries
Trill Arduino and Processing libraries are licensed under BSD 3-Clause License. For more information see here.
The Trill Bela library is distributed under LGPL, the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL 3.0), available here: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-3.0.txt.
Using Trill in commercial products
It’s possible to use Trill design files and firmware for a commercial projects free of charge under CC-BY-SA (hardware) and GPL (firmware). Both licenses allow you to use these assets yourself under the license requirements (which include releasing any changes you make to the designs under the same license).
If you want to use Trill design files but not provide attribution and/or not release your source code - for example, because you want to create something to sell using these files but don’t want to make your source files public and linked to this repo - this is still possible, but requires a commercial license. Bela can provide you with a commercial licesnse that fits your project and its scope, starting at £500 for 500 pieces. Get in touch with the Bela team at info@bela.io to discuss your product and the license that’s right for you.
Please note: the above commercial licensing applies only to modifications to our provided firmware code and PCB designs. You are free to buy Trill sensors for use in any commercial or personal project. We offer discounts for bulk orders of Trill sensors for commercial use; please email info@bela.io to discuss your needs.
The Bela name and logo
Bela’s name and logo are trademarked, and are reserved for commercial products that are produced by or licensed by Bela and Augmented Instruments Ltd.
Adding the Bela logo to your projects
If you’ve made something with Bela and want to use our logo, we have a logo especially for community products! Download it here. You’re free to use it on physical products, websites, in photos, or anywhere else to show that Bela is in what you’ve made.
Can I call what I’ve made a Bela product?
Calling something a “Bela product” or using Bela in a product name is reserved only for things made or licensed by Bela and Augmented Instruments Ltd, and cannot be used to describe unofficial product variants - this is to provide clarity about the products that we develop, endorse and support.
If you’ve made something using Bela, here’s how you can integrate Bela with your product name:
- [ProductName] for Bela
- [ProductName] (Bela-compatible)
Please note that we don’t authorise the use of “Bela” outside the above, and other terms (such as “Bela [ProductName]”, “[ProductName] Bela”, or “Bela-compatible [ProductName]”) should be avoided. If you’re not sure or have any questions, please drop us a line.