Commercial use and licensing
Who may use RouteRTL free of charge, who needs a commercial licence, and how a licence key is checked. This page describes current policy. It is not a contract, it does not grant or vary any licence, and the licence texts control.
What changed in 5.1.0
This page used to say that the daily flow was free for commercial use. From release 5.1.0 that is no longer the case. After a 30-day evaluation, use for the benefit of an organization of any size needs a commercial licence.
Under the PolyForm Shield License 1.0.0, the core could be used for any purpose free of charge, commercial use inside a company included, except to provide a competing product. Releases up to 5.0.x stay under that licence. A release you already obtained keeps the terms it was published with.
The software licences
RouteRTL has two parts under different licences.
- The open shell (CLI, build system, cocotb drivers, documentation, examples) is under the MIT License.
- The compiled core is under the RouteRTL Core License 1.0, for releases from 5.1.0.
- Academic use of the core is under the RouteRTL Academic License 1.0.
- Releases before 5.1.0 remain under the PolyForm Shield License 1.0.0 they were published with.
The licence texts ship in the source tree and in the published package. Those texts control.
Who may use the core free of charge
- Anyone, for a 30-day evaluation. For use for a company, the 30 days start on the first day anyone uses RouteRTL for the company, and they run once for the company.
- An individual, for their own benefit and not for the benefit of any organization, after registering. Registration is free. This covers the daily flow. An employee's personal project that is not for the benefit of any organization counts as individual use.
- An open-hardware project, for that project only, when the design sources are available to anyone now, free of charge, under an open license. This covers the daily flow. Features that need a licence key still need a key.
- Teaching and published non-commercial research at an eligible institution, under the RouteRTL Academic License 1.0.
Who needs a commercial licence
Use for the benefit of an organization of any size, after the evaluation, needs a commercial licence. There is no size exemption.
An organization is any legal entity, sole proprietorship, partnership, public body, or other kind of organization, for profit or not. Freelancers and sole proprietors are organizations. There is no general exemption for non-profits or public bodies. Use for a company covers its affiliates.
A commercial licence is a named seat per engineer or a company-wide Enterprise licence. Contact us for a quote.
The daily flow
The daily flow is the build, simulation, and hardware flow:
- Single-vendor and multi-vendor build orchestration across the supported Xilinx, Intel, Lattice, and Microchip backends
- Synthesis, implementation, and bitstream generation
- Open-source toolchain support and the virtual board
- Simulation with nvc, GHDL, Verilator, and cocotb
- All lint profiles
- rr program and rr linux
- Local telemetry and local rr diagnose
- Registry search, package installation, and IP submission
A registered individual uses it free of charge. In an organization it is part of a seat or an Enterprise licence.
Vendor toolchains are supplied and licensed by their own vendors. RouteRTL orchestrates the toolchains already installed on the machine and does not provide them.
Features that need a licence key
The agent verification loop and the evidence features work only with a licence key:
- rr verify: verification sessions and evidence records
- rr loop: the agent verification loop
- rr formal: PSL and SVA property checking
- Coverage maps against a requirements contract
A key comes with an evaluation, a seat, an Enterprise licence, or an academic registration. Individual registration does not include these features.
Academic use
The RouteRTL Academic License 1.0 is available to accredited institutions that award academic degrees and to non-profit public research institutes. It covers teaching, coursework, student projects, student competitions, and non-commercial research whose results are published. It includes the features that need a licence key.
Outputs of those features that are given to anyone else carry the line “Produced under a RouteRTL Academic License - not for commercial use.” Research funded in whole or in part by a company is commercial use and needs a commercial licence.
Registration
To register means to create an account with the licensor under a verified email address. Registration is free of charge. It is a condition of the licence for individual use after the evaluation. RouteRTL does not lock the software when you have not registered.
Changes for later releases
Licence terms and feature sets may change for later releases. A change applies to later releases. It does not alter the licence terms of a release you already obtained.
How a licence key is checked
A licence key is an Ed25519-signed token held on the machine. RouteRTL checks that token locally against a public key built into the release. The check itself contacts no server, so a machine with an issued key can run the licensed features offline, including on an air-gapped network.
Keys carry an expiry, so renewal involves installing a replacement key. Obtaining or refreshing a key, and commands that use registry, package, or online diagnostic services, do require network access.
The daily flow runs without a key. Whether you need a commercial licence is set by the licence terms, not by a key check. Commands that need a key refuse with an explicit error naming the entitlement they need.
Enforcement
The licence does not allow removing, disabling, or working around the key check, or the marking the software adds to its output. Obligations attached to a commercial licence are set out in the written terms supplied before purchase, and those terms control where they conflict with this page.