Open source

Flagship is OSS. The platform's value belongs to the user, on hardware the user owns, under keys the user controls. The license guarantees that even if we vanished tomorrow, your install keeps running and anyone can fork the codebase to keep it alive.

License

Flagship is licensed under the Business Source License 1.1 (BUSL-1.1) with a Change Date of 2030-05-03. On that date the entire codebase auto-relicenses to Apache 2.0. Until then, you can:

• Read every line of source: nothing is hidden.
• Run the entire stack on your own hardware, for your own use.
• Share modifications with friends running their own boxes.
• Fork the project to keep it alive if we go away.

The license restricts only one thing: standing up a commercial, hosted Flagship-as-a-service competitor before the Change Date. That carve-out is what funds the work that would otherwise have to be VC-funded, and the carve-out evaporates in 2030.

Repository

The canonical repo is github.com/ibisllc/flagship. It contains everything: the Cloudflare Worker that powers flagshipserver.com, the Fly app that powers flagship.services, the server daemon, the apkovl + ISO builders, the install scripts, and the iOS / Android scaffolds.

How to contribute

• Bug reports + small PRs: open an issue or PR against the canonical repo. We respond on a weekly cadence; tests must pass.
• Security disclosures: see /security and /.well-known/security.txt. Please report privately first.
• Larger features: open a discussion before writing code. The codebase has strong architectural invariants (TLS terminates on the user's box; flagship.services literally cannot read user content; every cross-pod message is canonical-bytes signed) and we'd rather align upfront than reject a 2-week PR.

Governance

The Flagship project is currently maintained by Anthropic-funded contributors plus the open community. There is no formal foundation yet; we'll set one up before we hit 1.0 and start growing past early adopters. Until then, "what gets merged" is decided in public on the issue tracker. There are no closed-door technical decisions.

Reproducible builds

The bootable ISO is reproducible: anyone can build it from the same source tag and verify the personalization trailer doesn't smuggle anything past the user's view. This is essential for the trust pitch: the install medium is too high-leverage to leave unverifiable.

Why BUSL and not Apache from day one?

We picked BUSL-1.1 with a 2030 Change Date for one specific reason: a hyperscaler running a hosted "Flagship-but-it's-our-product" service in year one would kill the project's ability to fund itself before we could ship the things that take time (mobile apps, peer backup, hardware partnership). The 2030 date is the gate; after that the entire codebase is Apache 2.0, with no hidden private modules. We are not pulling a SSPL-style bait-and-switch.

Contributors

The full contributor list lives in CONTRIBUTORS.md at the canonical repo. Significant contributors get listed on the project's public site at the next release after their PR lands.

Last updated: 2026-05-09. License questions: legal@flagshipserver.com.