COPYING

## COPYING

YAI licensing compatibility notice

This file is retained as a traditional `COPYING` compatibility surface. The canonical root licensing surfaces are now:

- `LICENSE`
- `LICENSING.md`
- `COMMERCIAL.md`

YAI is free for development / non-production. Production shorthand: commercial license required for production / organizational use.

Source access does not automatically grant production rights.

## Interpretation Order

License interpretation order:

1. explicit per-file SPDX identifiers or file-level notices, when present
2. third-party licenses shipped with vendored, embedded, or externally sourced dependencies
3. repository-level licensing notices in `LICENSE` and `LICENSING.md` for first-party files that do not carry a more specific license header

Files or directories under `vendor/`, `tools/third_party/`, or other explicitly marked third-party surfaces may be governed by their own license terms. Those terms take precedence for the relevant files.

## No Implicit Relicensing

Contribution, inclusion, or redistribution of material in this repository does not imply relicensing of files that already carry explicit license identifiers or third-party license terms.

Contribution to the community source tree does not imply unrestricted production rights.

## Commercial Production Use

Commercial licensing is required for production, organizational, persistent, collaborative, or business-critical use.

Self-managed posture: self-managed deployment is compatible with commercial production licensing. Operating YAI on your own infrastructure does not remove the need for production rights when the use is production or organizational.