Houston Beta
Houston docs

License and legal

Houston is open-source software under the Apache License 2.0 (LICENSE in the repository, and a copy inside the packaged app under Resources/). There's no account and no terms to accept: Houston opens straight into the app.

What the license lets you do

Anyone can use Houston for any purpose, read and modify the source, and redistribute original or modified copies, commercially or not, as long as they:

  • keep the license and copyright notices
  • pass along the NOTICE file
  • state which files they changed

The license also carries an express patent grant from every contributor. It disclaims all warranties, and it doesn't license the Houston brand.

The brand is held back in two ways, because a name and a piece of artwork are protected differently:

  • The name is a trademark, and Apache-2.0 section 6 grants no trademark rights.
  • The logo is also copyrightable artwork, so the icon and logo files are carved out of the Apache grant explicitly in NOTICE.

Everything else in the repository, source and non-source alike, is Apache-2.0 with no carve-out.

TRADEMARK.md sets out what anyone may do without asking: redistribute unmodified builds under the name, package Houston for a package manager, refer to Houston in their own work, and fork it and say so. In return, a modified build handed to other people should carry a different name.

Contributing

Contributions are covered by the same license under Apache-2.0 section 5, so there's no CLA to sign. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Your data

  • Houston stores conversations, settings, memories, and project data on your machine and sends no telemetry anywhere.
  • Prompts, code, and files go only to the model and other providers you configure, under those providers' own terms and model-training policies.
  • Third-party components bundled into the app are listed with their license texts in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md, which also ships inside the packaged app.