What changed in our licensing

On August 30, 2026 we tightened the licenses on both products — FeatureBoard, the MCP project server, and NativeCAD (formerly CADSolver), the CAD kernel and modeler. This page walks through every change in plain language. The license files that ship inside each product are the authoritative terms.

1. Every license is now annual — no more perpetual licenses

• Every tier, including the free ones, is now a 12-month term license. Free tiers (personal, public/open-source, NativeCAD Education / Maker) renew automatically at no charge for as long as you stay eligible — nothing to do, nothing to pay, but the grant is a renewing term, not a perpetual right.
• Paid licenses are annual subscriptions: renew to keep using. No tier grants a perpetual, irrevocable, or unrestricted license anymore, and we no longer issue perpetual keys.
• Keys sold before this change are honored exactly as issued.

2. Competitors are excluded — entirely

No license of any kind — free, trial, or paid — is available to the Excluded Parties named in each product's license: Dassault Systèmes, Siemens, Autodesk, PTC (incl. Onshape), Ansys, Hexagon, Bentley Systems, Trimble, Atlassian, Asana, Linear, monday.com, Notion, and ClickUp.

The exclusion covers each company's affiliates and its employees, officers, directors, and contractors — in any capacity, personal or commercial, for any reason — plus a catch-all for any other company competing in CAD/CAM/CAE/PLM or project-management / agentic-development tooling. Use by an Excluded Party isn't a license violation to cure; it's unlicensed, full stop, and a purchase by one is void.

3. No competitive analysis, no benchmarks without consent

• Publishing or disclosing benchmark, performance, or feature comparisons of either product requires our prior written consent.
• Using the products, their source, or their documentation to design, build, train, improve, or inform a competing product or service — including as training data for an AI/ML model — is prohibited for everyone, not just the named companies.
• Reverse engineering or circumventing license enforcement is prohibited (except where the law grants a non-waivable right).

4. When a license ends, the software comes off the machines

• At the end of an unrenewed term, or on termination, you stop using the software and uninstall it from every machine, server, and container under your control (backups as they cycle out), and certify removal in writing within 10 days if we ask.
• This flows down: if you shipped or provided the software to your customers, they — and their customers, at every tier — are bound to the same cease-and-remove obligation when your license ends.
• Your output is never touched. FeatureBoard boards are markdown on your own disk and read-only export stays available after expiry; NativeCAD geometry, drawings, and meshes you produced while licensed are yours outright, forever.

5. “As is”, now spelled out

Both products were always provided as-is; the licenses now say it the long way: no warranties of any kind, express, implied, or statutory — merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, accuracy, and uninterrupted operation all expressly disclaimed — no oral or written advice creates a warranty, liability is capped, and the boilerplate (severability, no-waiver, assignment, export compliance, survival) is filled in.

6. Evaluations can be approved and scoped by our agents

• The standard evaluations are unchanged: 24 hours for FeatureBoard's commercial trial, 60 days for NativeCAD inside a commercial organization.
• New: evaluations longer or broader than that can be approved by FeatureBoard.ai or its authorized agents — including our automated and AI agents operating through featureboard.ai, in-product tools, or support channels. The approval's recorded scope and duration are the license; our issuance records control what was approved.
• No agent approval can waive the competitor exclusion or the competitive-use restrictions.

What did not change

Where the actual terms live

• FeatureBoard: LICENSE.md and COMMERCIAL-LICENSE.md in the product and repository — plain-language summary at featureboard.ai/licensing.
• NativeCAD: LICENSE and COMMERCIAL.md in the repository — pricing and FAQ at featureboard.ai/nativecad.

This page is a convenience summary, not legal advice, and the license files control in any conflict. Questions, edge cases, or a use the exclusions catch that you think shouldn't?