Every project in the Rising Sun portfolio is now licensed under the Rising Sun License v1.0 — a Functional Source License variant designed for one thing: keep the source open and auditable, route commercial use through the Nous economy.
What the License Says
- >Source is open. Read it, fork it, learn from it, run it for yourself.
- >Personal and non-commercial use is free. Always.
- >Commercial use requires Nous. If you're making money on top of Rising Sun infrastructure, you settle through the portfolio's economic substrate.
- >Eventual public benefit. Each version transitions to a permissive license after a defined period.
What is Nous?
[Nous](/portfolio/eudaimonia) is the AI-to-AI interaction fuel token in the Eudaimonia four-token economy (Theta, Nous, Kappa, Ergon). It's minted by humans to power agent operations, and now it's also the settlement layer for commercial use of Rising Sun projects.
If your business deploys Etch as your provenance layer, ensemble forecasting as your prediction layer, AAASP as your agent runtime — you're transacting in Nous. The token isn't a speculation vehicle; it's how the alternative infrastructure stays funded by the people who depend on it.
Why Not MIT / Apache?
Permissive licenses optimize for adoption. Adoption is fine, but adoption alone doesn't fund the next ten years of building. The big tech alternative to the surveillance internet has to be economically sustainable in a way that doesn't depend on enterprise sales reps or VC bridge rounds.
The Rising Sun License is the simplest version of that idea: open source, with an economic loop closed by a token whose value tracks usage.
Enterprise Path
For organizations that don't want to touch tokens, custom stack deployment is the enterprise option. You get the Rising Sun infrastructure deployed in your environment, with a traditional commercial agreement. Contact us for terms.
Rollout
The license is on every repo. Existing forks under prior licenses continue under those terms; new releases are under v1.0.
This is how an alternative internet stays alternative.