We’re pleased to announce that Slurm-web is moving from GPLv3 to the MIT License. This decision follows feedback from the community through our public poll and will take effect with the upcoming v5.2.0 release, coming very soon.

Context

At Rackslab, we are deeply committed to open source and to keeping our software accessible to as many users as possible. To ensure that Slurm-web remains easy to integrate across a variety of contexts — research, education, and industry — we asked the community for input.

The feedback was clear: many users face legal and compliance challenges when integrating GPLv3 software into professional environments that also include proprietary components. We don’t want licensing to be a barrier to adoption. The community supported a more permissive license to make Slurm-web easier to adopt, integrate, and contribute to — while keeping it fully open source.

Why MIT?

We chose the MIT License because it provides greater interoperability, allowing seamless integration with proprietary systems without the strong copyleft constraints of GPLv3. It reduces legal and administrative friction for organizations with strict compliance policies and makes contributions simpler by streamlining code sharing and collaboration.

Moreover, the MIT License is one of the most widely recognized and trusted open-source licenses, both within the developer community and among corporate legal teams.

What’s changing

  • Slurm-web’s main license becomes MIT starting with v5.2.0.
  • The change covers the entire Slurm-web stack:
    • RFL (library used by Slurm-web) already switched to LGPLv3 since v1.6.0.
    • RacksDB will also adopt the MIT License with its next release v0.6.0.

Thanks

A big thank you to everyone who participated in the poll and shared feedback. Your insights and constructive discussions helped us quickly reach a decision that benefits the whole ecosystem.

We’re confident that this change will remove remaining adoption barriers and make it easier for all types of organizations to use and contribute to Slurm-web — while staying fully compliant with their legal and licensing requirements.

Learn more