License
Mira is free, open-source software.
What the license means
Mira is open source. The source code the software is built from is published for anyone to read. You can use Mira without paying, study exactly how it works, change it to suit you, and share it with others. None of that requires anyone’s permission.
Mira is released under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3, or AGPLv3 for short, the same license used by RStudio and Signal. It is a share-alike license: you get all the freedoms above, and in return anything built from Mira must remain open source.
FAQ for universities, NGOs, and institutional users
If you are a compliance officer, IT lead, or grant manager evaluating Mira for your institution, this section is for you. Mira uses the same AGPLv3 license as RStudio and Signal, software your institution very likely runs already. Institutions can use Mira with confidence, and we are happy to help with any questions or concerns about a particular use. Write to [email protected] or use the contact form and we will work through the specifics with you.
- 1. Can our institution use Mira?
- Yes. Researchers, faculty, staff, students, and members may use Mira freely — locally on their own machines or on infrastructure your institution operates — without owing anything to anyone. Internal use asks nothing of you: no publication, no registration, no notification.
- 2. Do we have to publish our research, our library, our notes, or our drafts?
- No. The AGPL applies to Mira itself (the software). It does not reach your scholarship: the documents you upload, the annotations you write, the search results you produce, the drafts in your Writing Desk, and any research outputs you create with Mira are entirely yours. The license is silent on what you make with the tool.
- 3. Can we host Mira for our staff, students, or members?
- Yes — on your own servers or any cloud you operate. If you are running an unmodified copy of Mira, nothing is asked of you beyond leaving the license notice in place, no matter who uses it or how. If the copy you host is modified, see question 5. And if you would like us to set it up for you, write to [email protected]; when we set it up, we take care of any compliance obligations that arise.
- 4. We charge tuition or membership fees. Does that change anything?
- No. The license takes no interest in whether your users pay you. A university whose students pay tuition, or a library whose members pay dues, may run Mira for them, and may run a modified Mira for them, on the same terms as anyone else. The only thing the license asks, and only when the copy you run is a modified one, is that the modified version be shared: share it with us and we make it available to the whole Mira community. Nothing more.
- 5. What if we modify Mira?
- You can modify Mira however you like. The license simply requires that the modified version be shared: share it with us, and we make it available to the whole Mira community, so everyone has the opportunity to benefit from any upgrades. Write to [email protected] or open a pull request and we fold your improvements into the main Mira repository on GitHub.
- 6. What if we host a modified Mira for others to use?
- You can. The only thing asked is the same sharing described in question 5: share the modified version with us and we make it available to the whole Mira community.
- 7. Do we have to open-source our other systems, or anything else we own?
- No.
- 8. What is an example of a use of Mira that is not allowed under the license?
- Suppose an IT team modifies Mira into a product of its own, hides the source code of the modified version, and sells access to it as a new subscription service. That is the use the license does not allow.
- 9. Can you help us integrate Mira with our existing systems?
- Yes. We are glad to work alongside your IT team to connect Mira with the systems you already run: catalogues, repositories, sign-on, and the rest. We will manage any and all licensing and compliance issues that come with the work, so your team never has to become licensing experts. Write to [email protected] or use the contact form to start the conversation.
- 10. Can someone take Mira, reskin it, and sell it as their own closed product?
- No.
- 11. We have a specific concern. Who can we talk to?
- Write to [email protected] or use the contact form and describe the use case. You can also open an issue on the project’s repository at github.com/MarxReader. We are happy to work with universities, libraries, and NGOs to confirm that a particular deployment plan is uncomplicated.
Why AGPLv3?
Mira is a research tool for scholars and the institutions that support them. AGPLv3 keeps the project genuinely open: any improvements that end up in a publicly-hosted version come back to the community, so the tool can’t be quietly captured and offered back as a closed service. It is the same choice RStudio and Signal made, for the same reason. For the people Mira is built for — researchers, libraries, archives, and the NGOs that work alongside them — this is exactly the protection they need.