Question about legal use of Rocket.Chat FOSS in an air-gapped company environment

Community Support
1

I am currently preparing the deployment of Rocket.Chat in my company. We plan to run it in an air-gapped (offline) environment without any Internet connection, and I would like to be 100% sure that such a setup is fully compliant with your licensing terms.

From the LICENSE file in the repository I understand that:

  • all code outside of the ee/ directories is licensed under the MIT License,

  • only the Enterprise Edition parts (the ee/ directories) are covered by a separate commercial license.

My questions are:

  1. If I remove all Enterprise components (using the FOSS approach and building from source), can I legally deploy and use Rocket.Chat in my company under the MIT License?

  2. Does the FOSS (MIT) version impose any restrictions regarding the number of users (for example, the 50-user limit mentioned in relation to the Starter plan)?

  3. Is it allowed to run Rocket.Chat in a fully offline / air-gapped setup if I am not using any commercial features or cloud registration?

I would greatly appreciate your official confirmation that such a deployment is compliant with the MIT License and does not violate Rocket.Chat’s usage policies.

2

Why open a new thread?

You already have one. You are just making extra work.

  1. Yes
  2. No if you build it yourself and remove any restrictions
  3. No absolutely not - read the docs

Air-gapped Rocket.Chat workspaces require an offline license to unlock premium features.

Airgapped can be free with Starter up to 50 users.

It is not available under CE/MIT.

1 Like
3

I want to be 100% clear:
How can I use the FOSS version of Rocket.Chat (built from source, after removing EE components) in my company so that:

  • I don’t have to pay for a commercial license, and
  • I don’t have any user limit (more than 50 users).

What is the exact process or requirements to run this MIT-licensed FOSS version legally without restrictions?

4

I’m sorry, but I don’t understand this: if I run the FOSS version, I don’t have any user limits, but I still can’t run it offline. However, if I want to connect it to the cloud, then suddenly I have a 50-user limit? How does this make sense?

5

Read more.

As I already said. It’s open source, not free support.

6

Note. I do not work for Rocket. Don’t shoot the messenger. …

So. In ‘why’ in short, because Rocket has devs to feed. Who should pay (no, donations don’t work)??

Just the same as your company has staff that need paying.

Do you get paid, or do you work for free?

So Rocket says their code is open source. That means all the code is open to view and read.

It does not say you can just take it all for free and do as you want.

There is a world of difference between “free software” (which is still not necessarily free to USE) and open source.

What you want is a complete system totally free of any encumbrances, preferably with some support, maintained, fixed, up to date, all free of charge for your company to use to make profit. You do not expect to have to pay for that.

Have you ever really considered the consequences of that choice?? Seriously?

Rocket have said if you are a small biz we’ll provide software & services for free, but if you grow & profit, put some back.

If you really want “open source” then here is what we will provide as pure code to build from, but its limited. Make a choice.

So. Your choice.

If you want ‘free’ take the MIT code, do what you want, and enjoy the fruits of the labours of others. Within limits.

If you want extra features or functions accept there is a cost/benefit like any other business expense.

Free ne Free