The licence
VoiceStudio is released under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3. That file is the licence; this page is a plain-language summary of it and carries no legal weight of its own. Where the two disagree, the file wins.
What you can do
- Run it, for anything, including at work and for money.
- Read the source, change it, and run your changed version.
- Share it and your changes, under the same licence.
There is no seat count, no evaluation period, and no field-of-use restriction. Using VoiceStudio commercially does not by itself require anything from you.
What it asks in return
If you distribute the software or a modified version, the recipients get the source and the same freedoms you had.
The AGPL adds one thing the GPL doesn't: running it as a network service counts. If you modify VoiceStudio and let people use it over a network — a web app, an internal tool, a hosted API — you must offer those users the modified source, even though you never handed them a copy of the program.
In practice
- Using the desktop app at work. Nothing required.
- Calling the local API from your own code. Nothing required, as long as your code is a separate program talking to it over the network rather than a derived work of it.
- Shipping VoiceStudio inside a product you distribute. Your product falls under the AGPL and its source has to be available.
- Hosting a modified VoiceStudio for other people. Your users must be able to get your modified source.
If that last pair is a problem for your business, get legal advice before shipping and send an Enterprise enquiry. Buying a Pro or Lifetime seat does not by itself grant closed-source or private-hosting terms.
Models and dependencies
The AGPL covers VoiceStudio's own code. The speech models and third-party libraries it can load carry their own licences, and some are more restrictive than this one — a few are research-only. Check the licence of any model before you use it commercially; the repository lists them alongside each engine on GitHub.
No warranty
Sections 15 and 16 of the AGPL apply: the software comes with no warranty, and the contributors are not liable for what it does. That is the deal with all free software, and it is the reason you can have it for nothing.