Caddy Server it's free for live server?

I was confused with Caddy Server Licenses, it’s atill free to used in production live server?

Yes, Caddy is free to use for personal and commercial purposes, both locally and in production, without limitations or warranty of any kind, subject to the terms in the standard Apache 2.0 open source license. Just like any other open source project.

Original answer below, now outdated:


Caddy’s source code is Apache 2.0 licensed. You can read the terms here, it’s pretty permissive:

https://github.com/mholt/caddy/blob/master/LICENSE.txt

That means it’s totally free for you to use, including for live production servers, and in a commercial context. You may take this code, make any modifications you like, and use it for any purpose. You can even re-distribute it with your changes included and re-license those modifications (as long as you include the original license for the unmodified parts of the code and don’t include trademarked content).


As an additional service at https://caddyserver.com/, you can download pre-compiled binaries so you don’t need to compile the source code yourself. These binaries are licensed differently, and to use them commercially you need a paid license (which comes with a number of other benefits). Without one of these licenses, you can only use a pre-compiled binary for personal use.

https://caddyserver.com/products/licenses


If you deploy your binaries via any other distribution method, such as a container image, you should find out whether those binaries were compiled from source or supplied by https://caddyserver.com/ as the license requirements carry through (a binary supplied by https://caddyserver.com/ but downloaded from Docker Hub still requires a paid license for commercial usage).

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@Phicheth_Kijtaow I’ve been using it the way @Whitestrake describes for a few months now. My use for Caddy has been relatively lightweight: nowhere near using all its capabilities, or scaling ability. If anything, this situation has encouraged me to start looking into learning “Go” programming; so I can help with bug fixes & try implementing my own ideas. Also helps to know the basics of being able to go through a Github download & compile the app with the right dependencies.

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although wouldnt it be more like that that thing CANNOT be used commercially AT ALL without replacing the binaries because the ones of the commercially licensed caddy differ from the free one?

after all, my self compiled caddy binary is quite a bit smaller than the download, meaning there’s more stuff inside.


by the way ( @matt ) , there is in my opinion one big issue with the binaries being on the Github release section as well.

considering the thing is listed as having a permissive License aka apache on Github, nobody would really expect a file on github to suddenly be free for personal use only.

and at least here in germany these kinds of unexpected EULA terms could be kicked into oblivion by court (such things have happened more than often enough). on top it doesnt even say there that the downloaded builds have an eula or link to it.

imo there should rather be just the info that the builds (which are free for personal use only) are found on the Caddy download page, with only the source downloads on github itself.

The most popular Caddy Docker container, abiosoft/caddy, builds its own binaries from source: caddy-docker/builder/builder.sh at master · abiosoft/caddy-docker · GitHub

Although it is possible, container images usually don’t have only the binary itself inside. They typically have a file hierarchy, other programs/binaries, sometimes other running daemons.

well that dockers dont have ONLY the binary inside is fairly obvious, but if a container uses a pre-built binary from the site, unless you replace that, you would have a problem with commercial use.

but when at least the most popular container builds from source that’s relieving.

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