License¶
ESDM is provided free of charge and as-is, without warranty of any kind. There is no per-instance license, no event-count threshold, no commercial tier. You can install it, run it, embed it in your CI pipelines, and ship its findings into your code review process at no cost.
ESDM consists of two parts that carry slightly different terms. The binary – the esdm executable you download and run – is closed-source. The schema – the YAML files inside the binary that describe what a valid ESDM model looks like – is open source. Both are free to use and free to redistribute; neither may be modified.
The Binary¶
The esdm binary is closed source. You may use it freely, in commercial and non-commercial projects alike – on your local machine, on CI servers, on every developer workstation across an organization – without any per-instance, per-seat, or per-event accounting. You may redistribute it as-is, for example by mirroring it on an internal artifact registry, bundling it into a container image, or shipping it inside a tooling distribution.
What you may not do: modify the binary, reverse-engineer it, decompile it, or extract parts of it for separate use. Pre-built binaries for macOS, Linux, and Windows on arm64 and amd64 cover every platform we expect a developer or CI runner to need; if your platform is missing, write to us rather than recreate the binary yourself.
The Schema¶
The ESDM schema – the YAML files inside the binary that define every kind, every field, and every constraint – is open source. You can read it, point an AI agent at it, validate your models against it, and explore it in your editor.
You may use the schema however you wish – in commercial projects, in tools you build yourself, and as a reference when working on third-party integrations. You may redistribute the schema YAML files as-is: copy them into your own repositories, mirror them on internal infrastructure, bundle them into your tooling.
You may also redistribute excerpts – individual definitions or fragments quoted in articles, books, blog posts, or third-party tools – provided you clearly mark the excerpt as such and point to https://www.esdm.io as the location of the full, authoritative version.
What you may not do: modify the schema. The schema is normative – an authoritative description of what ESDM means – and divergent forks dilute that. If a definition seems wrong or missing, write to us; we'd rather hear about it than discover an incompatible variant in the wild.
.esdm.yaml models you author against the schema are not derivative works of the schema. Your models are your own – the schema is the vocabulary they're written in, in the same way that a dictionary defines a language without claiming ownership of every sentence written in it.
Copyright¶
Every schema YAML file carries a copyright header naming the native web GmbH as the rightsholder and pointing back to these terms. The header must not be removed. When you redistribute a schema file, the header travels with it; when you quote an excerpt, the source pointer to https://www.esdm.io stands in.
How ESDM Is Maintained¶
ESDM is developed and maintained by the native web GmbH, a Germany-based consultancy specializing in Event Sourcing, CQRS, Domain-Driven Design, and event-driven architectures. ESDM grew out of the modeling work we do with our clients – the vocabulary you find in the schema is the same vocabulary we use every day.
Reporting Issues¶
If you run into a bug, a misleading diagnostic, a rule that flags something it shouldn't, or a feature you'd like to see, write to hello@thenativeweb.io. The same address is the right contact for commercial questions, integration support, or a general conversation about Event Sourcing and Domain-Driven Design.