--- source: https://carbone.io/company/code-license.html title: "Carbone Code License (CCL) for the CarboneJS source code" description: "Carbone Code License (CCL) - source-available license of the CarboneJS source code published on GitHub and npm | Carbone Report and Document Generator" generated_at: "2026-10-30" --- # Carbone Code License Version 2.0 - Effective date: October 26, 2026 ## In a nutshell > ℹ️ **Note:** **As long as you are not offering the Carbone source code as a hosted Document-Generator-as-a-Service, and you are not building a competing document generator with it, you can use all Community features for free, inside your own products.** > > This summary gives the spirit of the license, the full text below is the legally binding version. For any question, contact [contact@carbone.io](mailto:contact@carbone.io). This license is inspired by the Timescale License Agreement. ## Agreement PLEASE READ CAREFULLY THIS CARBONE CODE LICENSE AGREEMENT ("CCL AGREEMENT"), WHICH CONSTITUTES A LEGALLY BINDING AGREEMENT AND GOVERNS USE OF THE CARBONE COMMUNITY EDITION SOFTWARE. BY INSTALLING OR USING SUCH SOFTWARE, YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE READ AND AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THIS CCL AGREEMENT. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH SUCH TERMS AND CONDITIONS, YOU MAY NOT INSTALL OR USE SUCH SOFTWARE. IF YOU ARE INSTALLING OR USING SUCH SOFTWARE ON BEHALF OF A LEGAL ENTITY, YOU REPRESENT AND WARRANT THAT YOU HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO AGREE TO THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THIS CCL AGREEMENT ON BEHALF OF THAT LEGAL ENTITY AND THE RIGHT TO BIND THAT LEGAL ENTITY TO THIS CCL AGREEMENT. This CCL Agreement is entered into by and between CarboneIO SAS, registered under N°899 106 785 in the Register of companies of La Roche-sur-Yon, France ("CarboneIO") and you or the legal entity on whose behalf you are accepting this CCL Agreement ("You"). ## 0\. Background The Carbone document generator is offered as "open core" software: only the core of the software is published as source code, at [github.com/carboneio/carbone](https://github.com/carboneio/carbone). This source code is **source-available**, not open source: it can be read, used and modified under the conditions of this CCL Agreement, which restricts some uses. The Carbone document generator is distributed in two editions: - the Carbone Community Edition Software (as defined below), available free of charge under this CCL Agreement; - the Carbone Enterprise Edition, a closed-source software with more features, available as Carbone Cloud under the [Cloud Terms of Service](/company/terms-of-service.md) and as Carbone On-Premise under the [Carbone On-Premise License](/company/on-premise-license.md). ## 1\. Governing licenses **1.1 Scope.** This CCL Agreement governs the source code of the Carbone Community Edition Software published by CarboneIO at [https://github.com/carboneio/carbone](https://github.com/carboneio/carbone) and the npm package `carbone` built from it. The Carbone On-Premise binaries and Docker images, including when they run without a license key, are governed by the [Carbone On-Premise License](/company/on-premise-license.md), not by this CCL Agreement. **1.2 Previous versions.** Versions of the `carbone` npm package published up to and including version 3.2.3 were released under the Apache License 2.0 and remain governed by it. Later versions are governed by the version of this CCL Agreement in force at their release date (see Section 8.2). **1.3 License Rights to Your Customers.** As set forth in Section 2.1 below, the use by Your customers of the Carbone Community Edition Software as part of any Value Added Products or Services that You distribute will be subject to the most current version of this CCL Agreement. ## 2\. Grant of licenses **2.1 Grant.** Conditioned upon compliance with all of the terms and conditions of this CCL Agreement, CarboneIO grants to You at no charge the following limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, fully paid up, worldwide licenses, without the right to grant or authorize sublicenses (except as set forth in Section 2.3): - **(a) Internal Use.** A license to copy, compile, install, and use the Carbone Community Edition Software and Derivative Works solely for Your own internal business purposes in a manner that does not expose or give access to, directly or indirectly (e.g., via a wrapper), the Carbone Community Edition Software features to any person or entity other than You or Your employees and Contractors working on Your behalf. - **(b) Value Added Products or Services.** A license (i) to copy, compile, install, and use the Carbone Community Edition Software, Derivative Works, or parts thereof to develop and maintain Your Value Added Products or Services, (ii) to utilize (in the case of services) copies of the Carbone Community Edition Software, Derivative Works, or parts thereof solely as incorporated into or utilized with Your Value Added Products or Services, and (iii) to distribute (in the case of products that are distributed to Your customers) copies of the Carbone Community Edition Software or of Derivative Works, solely as incorporated into or utilized with Your Value Added Products or Services; provided that You notify Your customers that use of such Carbone Community Edition Software or Derivative Works is subject to this CCL Agreement and You provide to each such customer a copy of the most current version of this CCL Agreement or the URL [https://carbone.io/company/code-license.html](https://carbone.io/company/code-license.md). - **(c) Distribution in Standalone Form.** Subject to the prohibitions in Section 2.2 below, a license to copy and distribute the Carbone Community Edition Software source code solely in unmodified standalone form, with this CCL Agreement and all proprietary notices. - **(d) Derivative Works.** A license (i) to prepare, compile, and test Derivative Works of the Carbone Community Edition Software; (ii) to use Derivative Works for Internal Use solely as expressly permitted in Section 2.1(a); (iii) to utilize Derivative Works with Your Value Added Products or Services solely as expressly permitted in Section 2.1(b); (iv) to distribute Derivative Works with Your Value Added Products or Services solely as expressly permitted in Section 2.1(b); and (v) to submit Derivative Works back to CarboneIO under CarboneIO's Contributor Agreement for potential incorporation into CarboneIO's maintained code base at its sole discretion. **2.2 Prohibitions.** Notwithstanding any other provision in this CCL Agreement, You are prohibited from (i) using any Carbone Community Edition Software to provide document-generator-as-a-service services, or to provide any form of software-as-a-service or service offering in which the Carbone Community Edition Software is offered or made available to third parties to provide Document Generator functions or operations, other than as part of Your Value Added Products or Services, or (ii) copying or distributing any Carbone Community Edition Software for use in any of the foregoing ways. In addition, You agree not to, except as expressly permitted in Section 2.1(d), prepare Derivative Works of any Carbone Community Edition Software or, except as expressly permitted herein, transfer, sell, rent, lease, sublicense, loan, or otherwise transfer or make available any Carbone Community Edition Software. **2.3 Affiliates and Contractors.** You may permit Your Contractors and Affiliates to exercise the licenses set forth in Section 2.1, provided that such exercise by Contractors must be solely for Your benefit and/or the benefit of Your Affiliates, and You shall be responsible for all acts and omissions of such Contractors and Affiliates in connection with such exercise of the licenses, including but not limited to breach of any terms of this CCL Agreement. **2.4 Reservation of Rights.** Except as expressly set forth in Section 2.1, no other license or rights to the Carbone Community Edition Software are granted to You under this CCL Agreement, whether by implication, estoppel, or otherwise. ## 3\. Restrictions Except to the extent expressly permitted by this CCL Agreement or by mandatory law (in particular Article L122-6-1 of the French Intellectual Property Code and Articles 5 and 6 of Directive 2009/24/EC), You shall not, directly or through a third party, whether manually or by means of automated tools or artificial intelligence systems: - (a) copy, modify, translate, adapt or create derivative works of the Carbone Community Edition Software other than as permitted in Section 2.1; - (b) use the Carbone Community Edition Software, its documentation or its outputs to design, develop, train or improve a Document Generator, or any product or service whose primary function is document generation, that competes with Carbone; - (c) decompile, disassemble or reverse engineer the Carbone Enterprise Edition, or use the Carbone Community Edition Software to attempt to derive the source code, algorithms or internal structure of the Carbone Enterprise Edition; - (d) remove or alter any copyright, trademark or other proprietary notice included in the Carbone Community Edition Software. ## 4\. Intellectual property and trademarks **4.1 Ownership.** The Carbone Community Edition Software is licensed, not sold. CarboneIO owns all right, title and interest in and to the Carbone Community Edition Software, its documentation and its template language. Each Derivative Work must keep the copyright notices of CarboneIO and a copy of, or link to, this CCL Agreement. **4.2 Trademarks.** "Carbone" and the Carbone logo are registered trademarks of CarboneIO. This CCL Agreement grants no right to use them. You may refer to Carbone in a factual way (for example "compatible with Carbone" or "powered by Carbone"), but You may not use "Carbone", or a confusingly similar name, in the name of a fork, product, service, package or domain name, nor use the Carbone logo, without the prior written permission of CarboneIO. ## 5\. Definitions In addition to other terms defined elsewhere in this CCL Agreement, the terms below have the following meanings: **5.1 "Affiliate"** means, if You are a legal entity, any legal entity that controls, is controlled by, or which is under common control with, You, where "control" means ownership of at least fifty percent (50%) of the outstanding voting shares of the legal entity, or the contractual right to establish policy for, and manage the operations of, the legal entity. **5.2 "Contractor"** means a person or entity engaged as a consultant or contractor to perform work on Your behalf, but only to the extent such person or entity is performing such work on Your behalf. **5.3 "Derivative Work"** means any modification or enhancement made by You to the Carbone Community Edition Software, whether in source code, binary executable, intermediate, or other form. **5.4 "Document Generator"** means a tool that generates documents of any form and any type. **5.5 "Carbone Community Edition Software"** means those portions of the Carbone Enterprise Edition that CarboneIO makes publicly available as source code from time to time under the terms of this CCL Agreement, at [https://github.com/carboneio/carbone](https://github.com/carboneio/carbone) and in the npm package `carbone`. **5.6 "Carbone Enterprise Edition"** means the full-feature Document Generator closed-source software and related software made available by CarboneIO, as Carbone Cloud and as Carbone On-Premise. **5.7 "Value Added Products or Services"** means products or services developed by or for You that utilize (for example, as a back-end function or part of a software stack) all or parts of the Carbone Community Edition Software to provide Document Generator functions in support of larger value-added products or services (for example, an ERP software or vertical-specific application) with respect to which all of the following are true: - (i) such value-added products or services are not primarily Document Generator products or services; - (ii) such value-added products or services add substantial value of a different nature to the Document Generator provided by CarboneIO and are the key functions upon which such products or services are offered and marketed. ## 6\. Termination This CCL Agreement will automatically terminate, whether or not You receive notice of such termination from CarboneIO, in the event You breach any of its terms or conditions. Upon termination, You shall stop using and distributing the Carbone Community Edition Software and Your Derivative Works. Sections 3, 4, 6, 7 and 8 survive termination. In accordance with Section 7 below, CarboneIO shall have no liability for any damage, loss, or expense of any kind, whether consequential, indirect, or direct, suffered or incurred by You arising from or incident to the termination of this CCL Agreement, whether or not CarboneIO has been advised or is aware of any such potential damage, loss, or expense. ## 7\. Disclaimer of warranties and limitation of liability **7.1 Disclaimer of Warranties.** TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED UNDER APPLICABLE LAW, ALL CARBONEIO SOFTWARE PROVIDED UNDER THIS CCL AGREEMENT IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND AND CARBONEIO DISCLAIMS ALL SUCH WARRANTIES, WHETHER EXPRESS, STATUTORY, OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, TITLE, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES ARISING FROM USAGE OF TRADE, COURSE OF DEALING, OR COURSE OF PERFORMANCE. WITHOUT LIMITING THE FOREGOING, CARBONEIO MAKES NO WARRANTY OR REPRESENTATION AS TO THE RELIABILITY, TIMELINESS, QUALITY, SUITABILITY, PROFITABILITY, SUPPORT, PERFORMANCE, LOSS OF USE OR LOSS OF DATA, AVAILABILITY, OR ACCURACY OF THE CARBONE COMMUNITY EDITION SOFTWARE. YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT CHANGES MADE BY CARBONEIO TO THE CARBONE COMMUNITY EDITION SOFTWARE MAY DISRUPT INTEROPERATION WITH YOUR VALUE ADDED PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. CARBONEIO AND ITS LICENSORS DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE CARBONE COMMUNITY EDITION SOFTWARE, OR ANY PORTION THEREOF, IS ERROR FREE OR WILL OPERATE WITHOUT INTERRUPTION, OR THAT ANY VALUE ADDED PRODUCT OR SERVICE INTEROPERATING WITH THE CARBONE COMMUNITY EDITION SOFTWARE WILL NOT EXPERIENCE LOSS OF USE OR LOSS OF DATA. YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT IN ENTERING INTO THIS CCL AGREEMENT, YOU HAVE NOT RELIED ON ANY PROMISE, WARRANTY, OR REPRESENTATION NOT EXPRESSLY SET FORTH IN THIS AGREEMENT. **7.2 Limitation of Liability.** TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED UNDER APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL CARBONEIO OR ITS LICENSORS BE LIABLE TO YOU OR ANY THIRD PARTY FOR ANY DIRECT OR INDIRECT DAMAGES, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY LOSS OF PROFITS OR REVENUE, LOSS OF USE, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, LOSS OF DATA, COST OF COVER OR SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES, OR FOR ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE, OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES OF ANY KIND, HOWEVER CAUSED, RELATED TO, OR ARISING OUT OF THIS CCL AGREEMENT, ITS TERMINATION OR THE PERFORMANCE OR FAILURE TO PERFORM THIS CCL AGREEMENT, OR THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE CARBONE COMMUNITY EDITION SOFTWARE, WHETHER ALLEGED AS A BREACH OF CONTRACT, BREACH OF WARRANTY, TORTIOUS CONDUCT, INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE, OR ANY OTHER LEGAL THEORY, EVEN IF CARBONEIO HAS BEEN ADVISED OR IS AWARE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. ## 8\. General **8.1 Complete Agreement.** This CCL Agreement completely and exclusively states the entire agreement of the parties regarding the subject matter hereof and supersedes all prior proposals, agreements, or other communications between the parties, oral or written, regarding such subject matter. **8.2 Modification.** This CCL Agreement may be modified by CarboneIO from time to time, and any such modifications will be effective upon the "Effective Date" set forth at the top of the modified agreement. The modified agreement shall govern any new version of the Carbone Community Edition Software (and all its constituent source code and binaries) that is officially released as a complete version release by CarboneIO on or after such Effective Date. Except as set forth in this Section 8.2, this CCL Agreement may not be amended except by a writing executed by both parties. **8.3 Governing Law and Jurisdiction.** This CCL Agreement shall be governed by and construed solely under the laws of France. Any dispute relating to this CCL Agreement shall be submitted to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Paris commercial court (Tribunal des activités économiques de Paris). **8.4 Unenforceability.** If any provision of this CCL Agreement is held unenforceable, the remaining provisions of this CCL Agreement shall remain in effect and the unenforceable provision shall be replaced by an enforceable provision that best reflects the original intent of the parties. **8.5 Injunctive Relief.** You acknowledge that a breach or threatened breach of any provision of this CCL Agreement will cause irreparable harm to CarboneIO for which damages at law will not provide adequate relief, and CarboneIO shall therefore be entitled to injunctive relief against such breach or threatened breach. **8.6 Assignment.** You may not assign this CCL Agreement, including by operation of law in connection with a merger or acquisition or otherwise, in whole or in part, without the prior written consent of CarboneIO, which CarboneIO may grant or withhold in its sole and absolute discretion. Any assignment in violation of the preceding sentence is void. ## Version history - **Version 2.0** (October 26, 2026): renamed from "Carbone Community License" to "Carbone Code License" (the CCL acronym is unchanged), source-available wording, scope limited to the source code and the npm package, restrictions, trademarks, jurisdiction. - **Version 1.0** (February 14, 2023): first version, named "Carbone Community License", applicable from `carbone` 3.5.5. - **Before**: `carbone` versions up to 3.2.3 were released under the Apache License 2.0. ## Related topics - [Cloud Terms of Service](/company/terms-of-service.md) - [Security Policy](/company/security-policy.md) - [Privacy Policy](/company/privacy-policy.md) - [Carbone On-Premise License](/company/on-premise-license.md) - [Licenses](/company/licenses.md) - [Legal Notice](/company/legal-notices.md)