Elk Audio OS software licenses#
Elk is a Linux distribution, containing many different software packages and libraries.
The core Elk components, i.e. what makes Elk different than a generic embedded Linux distribution, are dual-licensed, with a copyleft open-source license available for free to everyone and a proprietary commercial license available on request.
The other components are redistributed following their original license’s terms.
Open-source license#
The open-source license comes completely free of charge and is the best way to get started. It is a “copyleft” license, which means that if you want to redistribute a product using it, you will also have to open-source your own code.
Binaries and support are provided only for the Raspberry Pi 4, for which images are available on Github.
The specific licenses for the Elk components are detailed in each Github repository:
TWINE, RASPA, elkpy and elkcpp are released under the GPL 3.0
All the kernel components, including the real-time audio driver are released under the GPL 2.0
The Yocto/Openembedded configuration is released under the MIT 2.0 license
Since Sushi & Sensei are licensed with the Affero variant, any external software (either running in the embedded system or in another machine) will be affected and therefore you will have to provide source code for it if you choose this license. This also applies to any plugin hosted by Sushi.
The open-source version of Elk Audio OS comes with a best effort community support through our forum community.
Commercial license#
If you do not want to release your own source code, or if you want to run Elk on architectures other than the Raspberry Pi, commercial licenses are available.
The benefits of a commercial license are:
Possibility to distribute closed-source proprietary audio products
More hardware architectures available, with dedicated firmware stack running on microcontrollers for extra features & performance
Priority support for bug fixes
Dedicated support for customizations
Early access to new Elk Audio OS features
Possibility to integrate Elk Live technology for IP audio streaming over the Internet
Cloud-based solutions for software deployment & users management
For pricing & more details on commercial licenses, please fill the form on our website or contact us at tech@elk.audio.