Open-source licensing as a product constraint

The licence changes the product

Miton’s repository is licensed under GNU Affero General Public License v3.0. That is not simply a distribution choice. It shapes the architecture, the evidence users can inspect and the business model the product can sustain.

AGPLv3 grants the freedoms to read, modify, run and redistribute the covered work under its terms. Its network-use provision also requires a modified service to offer corresponding source to its users. That matters for a local agentic workspace because the easiest extractive fork is not another desktop binary; it is a closed hosted service built from community work.

Auditability must be practical

Open source is not automatically understandable. A small proprietary layer on top of a vast fork can be technically available and practically unauditable. Building Miton from the ground up keeps the application’s agent runtime, permissions, routing and desktop commands within one project history.

Public claim evidence can therefore point to the code and decisions responsible for the behaviour. The licence makes inspection possible; architectural ownership makes inspection tractable.

Sustainability without token arbitrage

Miton’s intended workspace licence is separate from model spend. Users bring hosted provider access or local models. That removes the incentive to obscure token margins and focuses paid value on the maintained harness: project cohesion, routing, cost controls, specialised workspaces, safety and delivery.

The pre-release development build contains every implemented beta surface. Public access is not open yet; the beta will be a signed desktop download with automatic updates. Intended v1 packaging remains qualified until the release and licence boundaries are complete. The legal licence text itself is not rewritten by marketing copy; the repository LICENSE remains authoritative.

The constraint on contributors and operators

Contributors need a clear path from public issue to test, implementation and review. Operators who modify and offer the covered software over a network inherit AGPL obligations. Organisations should review those obligations with their own counsel; this paper explains product intent, not legal advice.

The licence expresses a long-term choice: Miton should be inspectable, modifiable and difficult to absorb into a closed service without returning improvements. That constraint narrows some commercial options. It also protects the conditions under which an ambitious local workspace can remain worth building in public.