KumoLicense
AGPL-3.0-only, plus how it interacts with third-party components Kumo uses.
Kumo is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3.0 only (AGPL-3.0-only).
The full text is at LICENSE.
What that means in practice
If you ship a modified Kumo — including over a network service — you must:
- Make your modified source code available to users.
- Keep the AGPL-3.0-only license on the result.
- Preserve copyright notices.
If you only use Kumo personally, the licence does not require you to publish anything.
If you fork to contribute back to upstream, you're already covered: your PR carries the same license as the rest of the project.
Contributor licensing
By opening a pull request you agree that your contribution is licensed under AGPL-3.0-only on the same terms as the rest of the project. We do not require a separate CLA.
If your employer claims rights to your work, please sort that out before submitting. We can't accept a PR that the contributor doesn't have the right to license.
Third-party components
Kumo bundles or talks to several upstream projects. Each is under its own license:
- Mihomo — the proxy core. GPL-3.0. Kumo spawns it as a child process; it is not statically linked.
- Sub-Store — the
subscription-management sidecar. Distributed under its own terms.
Kumo bundles a Node runtime and the generated
sub-store.bundle.js. - swift-argument-parser — Apache 2.0.
- Yams — MIT.
Aggregated notices live in docs/THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.
"Bundles" is doing real work in that list. If you're publishing a modified Kumo, please re-check each upstream's terms — the obligations are not all identical.
What you can't do
The AGPL exists to keep modifications open. A few things that go against the spirit (and likely against the letter) of the licence:
- Shipping a closed-source fork of Kumo.
- Removing the AGPL notice or copyright headers.
- Re-publishing Kumo's source under a different licence.
- Using "Kumo", "KumoApp", or the Kumo logo to imply endorsement of a derivative project. Use a different name and your own branding for your fork.
What you can do
- Build Kumo from source.
- Modify it for personal or internal use.
- Share patches via pull request.
- Run a private build for a team, with the source available to that team.
- Operate Kumo on someone else's behalf — provided you offer the source of your modifications to those users.
If you're unsure whether your use case is OK, ask in a discussion or issue. We'd rather help than litigate.