Continuity
What continues if Farna Labs stops operating, and what does not. Each claim about the license, the source or the documentation can be checked directly.
Short version
If Farna Labs stopped operating tomorrow, the instance you run would keep running.
Nothing a running instance needs is held only by Farna Labs. There is no license server to call, no hosted service in the request path, and no build secret held by anyone. The Community tier needs no license key at all, the source is public, and the documentation lives in the same repository.
What you keep
Five things continue without Farna Labs.
Community, with no license
A deployment with no license key boots and runs on Community. Pipelines run, the audit chain keeps recording, and your data stays in your database. The continuity document records this property and names the code that implements it.
The right to modify the software and run what you modify
The license grants the right to copy, modify, create derivative works and redistribute the source. Its Additional Use Grant permits production use, including personal, internal and commercial use, of Farna Control and of any modified version or derivative work you create. The field of use it withholds is offering Farna Control, or a modified or derivative version of it, as a paid hosted or managed service to third parties that provides substantially the same functionality as Farna Control. Modified copies and derivative works stay under the same license, so a patched version you run in production is covered. The terms are in LICENSE.
The source
The repository is public. Clone it, fork it, keep your own mirror of the tag you run.
The documentation
Deployment, upgrade, backup and continuity documentation is in docs/ inside the repository, so a clone carries its own recovery instructions.
Apache-2.0 for each release, three years after release
Each released version converts to the Apache License 2.0 three years after that version is first publicly released. The license calls this the Change Date and states the date for the version distributed with the file. See LICENSE.
What you lose
Three things stop. The page does not promise otherwise.
Team features, until you re-issue them
Team is unlocked by a signed license key with an expiry date. When the key lapses, the instance continues on Community and the Team capabilities switch off. Nothing is deleted, and the capabilities return when a valid key is installed. Re-issuing one yourself is covered below.
Farna Labs' patches and releases
No further patches, no release cadence and no maintenance commitment. If you need a fix after that point, you write it or commission it.
Support
Support from Farna Labs ends.
Recovering Team features
Team licenses are Ed25519-signed keys. The instance verifies a key locally against a single public key, the deployment's trust anchor, and does not contact Farna Labs to do it.
You do not need Farna Labs to issue the next key. Generate your own keypair, set your public key as the deployment's anchor, and sign your own Team license with the private key. The commands, and the two ways to install the key, are in Issue your own Team license.
Keep the anchor you use today. A license Farna Labs issued verifies only against the public key it was issued for. If you lose that public key, the license can no longer be verified, because re-issuing against it needs the private key, which Farna Labs holds. Moving to your own keypair removes that dependency.
Why licenses still matter
Farna Control can technically accept a license that you sign yourself, because the instance trusts whichever public key you configure. That is not a loophole. While Farna Labs is operating, signing your own license is not permitted under the license terms and is outside legal compliance. It exists only as a technical safeguard for a business continuity situation, where Farna Labs has stopped operating and nobody is left to issue one. Until then, you need a license issued by Farna Labs.
Rebuilding from source
The compose deployment pulls an image that Farna Labs builds. Treat the image as a convenience, not a dependency: the same image builds from a checkout of the source with no credential from Farna Labs and no third-party license key.
Build the image from source gives the build command, the local tag that makes compose use your build instead of pulling, and the readiness probe that confirms the stack started.
Build once per release you intend to keep running, on your own infrastructure, so the command is known to work before you need it.
Why nothing depends on Farna Labs continuing
This page promises no maintainer, no patch window and no support after Farna Labs stops operating. Those would be commitments about people and time, and the page makes none.
The continuity argument does not rest on any such arrangement. It rests on the software and the license being complete without one: the source is public, the license permits modification and production use, the documentation ships in the repository, and the build needs no secret from us. Those are artifacts you can copy today.
What to keep
Store these with your infrastructure secrets, not in a ticket.
A clone of the repository at the release tag you run
It carries the license, the deployment documentation and the Dockerfile the recovery build uses.
Your Team license key and the public key it verifies against
The public key is the
MODULO_LICENSE_PUBLIC_KEYvalue the deployment uses. Both are text, and losing the public key loses the license. Store the private key too if you generated your own.A tested backup of the database and object storage
Continuity of the software is not continuity of the data. Backup and restore documents the tooling.
The Change Date of the version you run
It tells you when that version becomes Apache-2.0. See LICENSE.
Last reviewed: October 2026.