Product licensing

At a glance

NextPDF ships in two licensing tracks. The core engine is open source under the Apache License 2.0. The NextPDF Pro and NextPDF Enterprise editions are proprietary, under a commercial license. This page explains what the Apache License 2.0 grants for the core, who may use it and how, and where the proprietary editions differ. It is a plain-language summary of the licensing model, not the license text itself and not legal advice.

Boundary. This page describes which license applies to which part of NextPDF and what that license permits in general terms. The authoritative wording is the LICENSE file shipped with the core package (the Apache License 2.0 in full) and your commercial license agreement for the paid editions. Where this summary and those documents differ, those documents govern. Licensing of the code is separate from rights to the NextPDF name and logo — see Trademark and brand use.

Install

The open-source core, licensed under the Apache License 2.0, installs from the public package registry:

composer require nextpdf/core

The composer.json for nextpdf/core declares "license": "Apache-2.0", and the package ships the full Apache License 2.0 text in its LICENSE file.

Conceptual overview

NextPDF separates what is open from what is commercial, and keeps both separate from brand rights.

NextPDF Core — Apache License 2.0 (open source). The core engine (nextpdf/core) is released under the Apache License 2.0, a permissive open-source license approved by the Open Source Initiative. Anyone may use it.
Spectrum acceleration component — LGPL-3.0-or-later. The optional Rust acceleration component (Spectrum) that backs certain high-throughput paths is licensed under the GNU LGPL-3.0-or-later, with a relink path for compliance. It is separate from the Apache-2.0 core and from the commercial editions.
NextPDF Pro and NextPDF Enterprise — proprietary commercial license. The paid editions are not open source. Their packages declare "license": "LicenseRef-NextPDF-Commercial", and their source headers carry @copyright 2026 PATEON NETWORK TECHNOLOGY INCORPORATED and @license LicenseRef-NextPDF-Commercial (with a matching SPDX-License-Identifier). Their use is governed by the NextPDF Commercial License Agreement (Version 3.0), not by the Apache License 2.0.
The NextPDF name and logo — trademarks. The “NextPDF” name and the NextPDF logo are trademarks of PATEON NETWORK TECHNOLOGY INCORPORATED. Holding an open-source code license does not grant rights in the name or logo. This is covered on the trademark page and is required reading before you rebrand or redistribute a build.

What the Apache License 2.0 grants for the core

The Apache License 2.0 is a permissive license. For nextpdf/core, in summary:

Broad usage rights. You may use, copy, modify, and redistribute the core, in source or compiled form, including as part of a larger work.
Commercial use is allowed. There is no non-commercial restriction. You may use the core in closed-source, paid, or internal commercial products.
A patent grant is included. The Apache License 2.0 includes an express grant of patent rights from contributors covering their contributions, with a defensive termination clause if you bring certain patent litigation over the software (Apache-2.0 §3).
Attribution and the NOTICE requirement. When you redistribute the core, or a derivative of it, you must keep the existing copyright, patent, trademark, and attribution notices, include a copy of the license, state any significant changes you made to the files, and — if the work includes a NOTICE file — carry forward its attribution notices in your redistribution (Apache-2.0 §4).
No trademark license. The Apache License 2.0 does not grant any right to the licensor’s trade names, trademarks, or logos, beyond what is reasonable and customary to describe the origin of the work (Apache-2.0 §6). This is the hinge between code rights and brand rights, and it is detailed on the trademark page.
Provided “as is.” The license disclaims warranties and limits liability (Apache-2.0 §7 and §8). The core is provided without warranty of any kind.

In short: for the core, anyone may use, modify, redistribute, and commercialize the code, provided they honor the attribution and NOTICE obligations — and provided they do not treat the code license as permission to use the NextPDF brand.

The proprietary editions

NextPDF Pro and NextPDF Enterprise are commercial products under a proprietary license. They are not covered by the Apache License 2.0, and the permissions above do not apply to them. The exact terms — what your subscription includes, how activation works, evaluation behavior, and grace and renewal terms — are described on the dedicated edition-licensing page and, authoritatively, in your license agreement.

Delivery and protection. The commercial editions are delivered either as ionCube-encoded binaries (a technological protection measure) or as signed plaintext source — and both convey the same license rights. The source is provided as PATEON’s confidential trade secret: being able to read it grants no right to copy, redistribute, disclose, or reverse engineer it beyond the license. Reverse engineering is restricted except to the extent mandatory law cannot be excluded — decompilation for interoperability and the observe / study / test rights under EU Directive 2009/24/EC, the interoperability exception in 17 U.S.C. §1201(f), and Article 80-2(3) of the R.O.C. Copyright Act are preserved. Where you purchase as a consumer, your non-waivable statutory rights prevail. The authoritative terms are the NextPDF Commercial License Agreement (Version 3.0) and your Schedule — see the EULA.

Commercial editions are sold by our Merchant of Record — an authorised reseller that is the seller of record for the order — while the software licence is granted by PATEON under the EULA. The binding purchase terms are in the Terms of Use and the Refund & Cancellation Policy, and purchase-data handling is described in the Privacy Policy. For the purchase path, see Buying and licensing.

This page deliberately does not duplicate those terms. For edition licensing and activation, see Licensing and activation. To compare the open distribution against the commercial editions, see Choose your path.

Per-edition summary

Edition	License	Who may use it	How to obtain
NextPDF Core	Apache License 2.0 (open source)	Anyone, including commercially, subject to the attribution and `NOTICE` requirements (Apache-2.0 §4)	`composer require nextpdf/core`
NextPDF Pro	Proprietary (LicenseRef-NextPDF-Commercial)	Licensees under a commercial agreement	See edition licensing
NextPDF Enterprise	Proprietary (LicenseRef-NextPDF-Commercial)	Licensees under a commercial agreement	See edition licensing

Edge cases & gotchas

The code license is not the brand license. An Apache License 2.0 grant covers the core code. It is not permission to use the “NextPDF” name or logo to brand or market a build. Those are separate rights — see Trademark and brand use.
Redistribution carries obligations. Apache-2.0 redistribution is permitted but not obligation-free: keep the notices, include the license, state your changes, and carry forward the NOTICE file if one is present (Apache-2.0 §4). Omitting these is a license violation even though the license is permissive.
“Open core” does not make the paid editions open. The core being Apache-2.0 says nothing about Pro or Enterprise. Those editions are proprietary regardless of the core’s license.
A license summary is not the license. This page paraphrases the Apache License 2.0 for orientation. The binding text is the LICENSE file in the package and your commercial agreement for the paid editions.

Security notes

Licensing is not a security control, but two boundaries matter for trust:

No warranty. The Apache License 2.0 provides the core “as is” and disclaims warranties and limits liability (Apache-2.0 §7 and §8). Using open-source code does not transfer risk to the licensor. Your deployment’s security remains your responsibility, as described in the trust center.
Proprietary terms are contractual. For Pro and Enterprise, what you may and may not do is defined by your commercial license agreement, not inferred from the open core. Read that agreement.

Conformance

Not applicable as a profile. This page documents the licensing model; it implements no standard. The Apache License 2.0 is referenced by name and clause for orientation only; the LICENSE file in the core package is the authoritative text.