Licensing the Viewer

Overview

realvirtual WEB is dual-licensed. The viewer is open source under AGPL-3.0-only, and the same software is available under a commercial licence. Which one applies is not a matter of price alone — it decides what you have to publish about your own delivery.

This page states the position plainly, because the difference matters most at exactly the moment it is easiest to overlook: when you hand a prepared twin to a customer.

The attribution is part of the licence

Every AGPL deployment shows the “Powered by realvirtual WEB” attribution. It is not a default you may style away: it is an attribution requirement under AGPL §7, so removing or hiding it ends your licence to use the software.

Removing the attribution is possible with a commercial licence, and that is the only way.

What AGPL asks in return

AGPL closes the network gap: if you deliver the viewer to users over a network — which is what every real deployment does — the complete corresponding source of what you delivered has to be available under AGPL as well.

In our reading, “what you delivered” is more than modified viewer code. It includes:

modifications to the viewer,
plugins and custom HMI components,
settings.json and comparable runtime configuration,
the delivered GLB models, including their rv_extras metadata.

That last point is the one that decides most projects. Machine geometry and the component configuration inside a GLB are usually the part a manufacturer least wants to publish — and under AGPL they are part of the delivered work.

AGPL does not forbid commercial use. You may earn money with an AGPL deployment — the price of the free licence is publication, not revenue. What it forbids is keeping the delivered work to yourself.

When you need a commercial licence

The attribution has to go, or the application carries your own brand.
Models, configuration or plugins must remain confidential.
You need the commercial modules — Layout Planner, DES, Editor, live inverse kinematics, virtual PLC — in your own deployment rather than only in the hosted demo.
You deliver offline, air-gapped or as a frozen release that has to keep working for years (see deployment options).
You build your own TypeScript plugins or integrate the viewer into your own application.

Prices

Prices for realvirtual WEB and for the deployment fees are published on the realvirtual WEB product page. Licensing for the gateway is described under CONNECT licensing.