The Wheelhouse licence#
Wheelhouse OS is two things under one image. The base — VyOS, Debian, the kernel and every daemon that does the routing — is free software and keeps its own licences, untouched. The parts Wheelhouse wrote — the agent, the web UI, the installer, the console recovery and support tools and the migration tooling — are proprietary, licensed rather than sold, and gated by a subscription key. This page states the grant as it stands today.
Which files are which#
| On the machine | Whose | Under what |
|---|---|---|
/usr/bin/wheelhouse-agent | Wheelhouse | Proprietary |
/usr/share/wheelhouse/ui | Wheelhouse | Proprietary, plus the bundled MIT libraries and the two OFL typefaces |
/usr/bin/wheelhouse-install, /usr/bin/wheelhouse-autoinstall, /usr/bin/wheelhouse-rescue, /usr/bin/wheelhouse-support, /usr/bin/wheelhouse-opnsense-import | Wheelhouse | Proprietary |
| Everything else in the image | VyOS, Debian and their upstreams | GPL-2.0 and the many licences in each package's own copyright file |
The agent is a separate program: it drives the router over its HTTP API and its op-mode commands, links against no GPL code and copies none — Built on VyOS.
The grant as it stands today#
The grant travels with the package and is installed at
/usr/share/doc/wheelhouse-agent/copyright. It is currently the whole of the grant:
Wheelhouse is proprietary software. You may run this copy on the system it was supplied for. Copying, redistribution, modification and reverse engineering are not permitted except where the law says otherwise, or where a separate written agreement says otherwise.
Copyright 2026 the Wheelhouse authors. The full terms have not been written and no publication address has been decided; until that document exists, the paragraph above is what there is. None of it applies to the third-party components listed in the same file — those keep their own licences, reproduced there in full.
Two exceptions in that paragraph matter. Except where the law says otherwise leaves whatever rights your jurisdiction gives you untouched by this file; what those are is a question for a lawyer where you are. Except where a separate written agreement says otherwise is the door a real licence agreement comes through, when one is written.
What the shipped terms add#
TERMS.txt is installed on every image at /usr/share/doc/wheelhouse/TERMS.txt, and
show license on the router prints it, because /usr/share/vyos/EULA is a symlink to it.
Beyond marking itself as a placeholder, it states what is settled today:
- Most of what runs on the machine is free software written by other people, each part keeping its own licence. Nothing in the Wheelhouse terms restricts any right those licences give you.
- The parts Wheelhouse wrote are proprietary and are licensed, not sold, under a subscription. They are separate programs from the GPL software they drive.
- You may run the image on hardware you own, take it apart, and inspect it.
- You may not redistribute the proprietary parts.
- Wheelhouse is not affiliated with, endorsed by or supported by the VyOS project or Sentrium S.L. — Trademarks.
- Warranty and liability are to be set by the final terms. Until then, assume the software is provided as-is with no warranty, which is what every third-party licence in the image says about its own part in any case.
A licence agreement is a different thing from a licence key#
Two words that sound alike and are not:
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| The licence | The agreement under which you are permitted to run the software. Described on this page. It does not exist in final form yet |
| A licence key | The WHL1.… token that unlocks configuration changes on a router. It is an entitlement, checked by the agent, and it is described under Licensing in this wiki |
A key is a signed statement of a plan, a router limit and an expiry. The agent verifies it
offline against a public key compiled into the binary, so a router with no route to the
internet still knows what it holds. A lapsed key does not brick the router: the agent still
signs you in, shows every page, counter, log and audit entry, and refuses only to stage,
commit, roll back, install apps or reconcile, answering 402 with the reason.
The check runs in a binary on a router you hold, so it can be patched. The design aims to make paying easier than patching, not to make patching impossible.
What does not exist yet#
None of these has been written or decided, and nothing is to be sold until they are:
| Document | Status |
|---|---|
| A licence agreement — grant, term, restrictions (including the non-commercial restriction on Homelab and Lab), warranty disclaimer, liability cap, governing law | Does not exist. The copyright file and TERMS.txt are the stopgap |
| Terms of service for the subscription — billing cadence, cancellation, refunds, what the router does at the end of a term | Does not exist |
| A price for each plan | Set, 2026-09-10 — the product site carries the three figures. Not yet sold under, because the two rows above do not exist |
| A support agreement or service-level agreement | Does not exist, and none is planned: no plan includes support — Support |
| A formal privacy notice, and a retention period for licence-refresh records | Not written — Privacy |
The read-only promise above — that a lapsed router keeps showing you everything — is a design decision, enforced in the code today. It is not yet a contractual commitment, because there is no contract. When terms exist, that promise belongs in them.
Questions about licensing#
There is no published contact for licence questions, and TERMS.txt on the image says the
same. There is no public issue tracker either, and the source forge is private, so neither
is a route. See Support.
See also#
- Built on VyOS — where the boundary between proprietary and GPL is drawn.
- Corresponding source — your rights over the GPL half, and how to exercise them.
- Third-party licences — everything linked into the agent or bundled into the UI.
- What is finished, and what is not — including the commercial gaps.
- Support — what each tier gets, and what is not promised.
- What the licence gates — the key, the states, and the routes that answer 402 without one.
- Enter a licence — where a key goes.