We are releasing new versions of Akka (2.9.6, 2.8.7, 2.7.1) that will require a license key for use in production. Existing versions of Akka will continue to operate unaffected.
License keys are free for all pre-production environments. Open source projects, startups, academia, and developers working on personal projects can obtain free keys for production environments. Commercial projects can obtain license keys for production environments by obtaining an Akka subscription.
We aim to ensure our customers succeed with their deployments, improve the security of customer environments while preparing for upcoming EU regulations, and to strengthen our business.
Akka is Critical Infrastructure. Akka is now used by over 25,000 commercial organizations powering over 100,000 applications that touch more than 2 billion people daily. These applications include retail, financial services, manufacturing, gaming, automotive, health care, and government systems. Akka is frequently the critical runtime powering these applications and is an essential part of the world’s most essential systems.
We care about the success and sustainability of our customers’ environments as much as they do. When we are aware of the environments that are placing Akka into production, we can provide guidance and support to ensure that every deployment is successful. It’s for these reasons that we offer free pre-production subscriptions that include support and legal protections.
This engagement with our customers requires us to be aware of who is using Akka. Obtaining a license key will allow us to identify Akka accounts and to structure support programs to better ensure their success.
Security and Regulatory. It takes more than 24 months for patch (x.x.x) releases of Akka to achieve 90% penetration whether for our latest versions or patches to versions nearly 5 years old! We have performed more than 100 patches and bug fixes within the last year, many of them improving runtime behavior or resolving high-CVE security issues. It’s important for customers in production to deploy the latest patches in a timely manner. Requiring a license key gives us a database of known production users that we can support to encourage rapid adoption.
Additionally, we are monitoring EU CRA A1-1.3.K that takes effect in Fall 2025. This regulation requires software vendors to notify users of vulnerability updates where ‘failure to comply’ imposes significant financial penalties. Similar regulations in other countries are emerging. Requiring a license key allows us to identify production users so that we can create notifications that allow us to comply with this regulation next year.
Lightbend’s Business. We believe in a model of sustainable open source. Our founder, Jonas Boner, has written about our goal of having an equitable exchange of value between the adopters of open source Akka and Lightbend.
To better achieve these goals, in 2022 we set Akka’s license to the Business Source License 1.1. The BSL provides for free usage in development or pre-production, but requires users to obtain a commercial license from Lightbend prior to going into production. We provide many customers with free production licenses, including academia, open source projects, and organizations with revenues less than $25M.
Having a license key to enable Akka behavior will allow us to better enforce the rights and restrictions associated with the BSL to bring more customers onto a Lightbend subscription which is how we execute on our sustainable open source vision.
To get a license key, individuals, open source projects and companies will need to disclose some information, including a valid email address. Ugh, the first thought in everyone’s mind is that we are going to endlessly market to you.
With this change, we are also introducing a revision to our Privacy Policy, which introduces a No Spam Promise.
We will NEVER spam you. We despise unsolicited email, too, and registering with us will not flood your Inbox with pointless nurturing emails. We will only email you essential operational or security updates, or, the monthly Newsletter if you explicitly opt-in for it.
Software vendors who change their open source software license is a topic of frequent discussion in media and online forums.
We have been invited onto podcasts to discuss our rationale and motives.
We have been transparent about the necessity of this shift and the dire consequences we were facing had we not shifted. We have discussed the trade-offs of open-governance OSS versus commercial-governance OSS.
We are frequently asked whether our use of BSL is open source software. I always answer, unequivocally, absolutely, “YES!, Akka is open source.”
Here is why. The world of open source is changing, and how we define open source software today is different from what the industry accepted a decade ago.
Akka is open source because:
We continue to release Akka with Apache licensing. Our BSL converts into Apache v2, an OSI-accepted OSS license, 36 months after each BSL version is released. This conversion is automatic and irrevocable - all new versions of Akka are eventually available on an OSI-favored license.
Our source code is source available, and can be inspected and reviewed by anyone. It’s free to read and learn from.
We accept contributions from outsiders and the community. The latest versions of Akka have multiple outsider contributions.
It's free for the large majority (>99%) of users, and we have addendums available to allow open source projects to leverage Akka within their own projects.
It is built upon open source and our engineers actively make contributions to other open source projects.
Akka is an open source project. We are also an open source company, based upon our long standing contributions to open source projects and our commitment to continuing to release software that is source available and converting into Apache licenses.
There are industry ideologues who believe that projects must include an OSI-approved license to be considered open source. This is a population that is shrinking as more of the world is searching for their own form of sustainable software. The OSI-only view is a noble lens of the world, but an unrealistic one.
The security risks that stem from open-governance OSS, the EU liability regulations coming in 2025, and the need for complex software projects to find a sustainable funding methodology is causing many more companies to reevaluate the license that they have on their software project. All software projects run the spectrum from completely closed to completely open, and our choice of the BSL (and our approach to implementing it) has us almost entirely open.
What will the next 100,000 Akka applications look like? We are excited about the future of what will be built and these changes to our model will enable us to be a part of that journey with you.
Come see us at Kubecon. You can hear more about our views as we’ll be a part of a Cloud Native StartupFest panel at Kubecon NA in November entitled "Startups with open source projects: Can they be successful in the CNCF? And should they be?"