obserae by spartan‑conseil
About

Licensing

obserae is closed-source, free-to-use software published by Spartan Conseil Cybersécurité. This page answers, in plain language, the questions people reasonably ask about a closed-source tool they’re about to run on their network. It does not replace the licence — the binding terms are in EULA.txt (French) and EULA.en.txt (English courtesy translation), bundled with every release and Docker image.

obserae is currently in alpha (pre-1.0). Every feature is open and free while it stabilises — including the features planned to become Enterprise later (see “Which features will become paid?” below).

Is obserae open source?

No. obserae ships as proprietary binaries and Docker images; the source code is not public. You are free to download it, run it, configure it and file issues — but not to read, modify or redistribute the source. A public GitHub repository for docs, releases and issues is not the same as an open-source licence, and we’d rather say so up front than have you find it in the fine print.

That said, the source is available for security review on request: a qualified reviewer evaluating obserae for production (say, a security team that won’t run a closed box on its network) can ask for code access under NDA. Write to licensing@spartan-conseil.fr.

Is it free? For whom?

Yes, for two groups (EULA art. 2):

  • Personal use — a natural person, on their own behalf, for non-commercial purposes.
  • Eligible small business — a group of ≤ 20 people and ≤ €2,000,000 annual revenue. Both criteria are cumulative.

It is self-assessed: there is no licence key, no sign-up, no activation. During the alpha, every feature is open to everyone.

Why are there limits, if it’s free?

obserae is both a passion and a business, and the bills are real. The aim is to be generous — free for individuals and small businesses, one-off audits allowed, every feature open during the alpha — without leaving the door open to abuse. Software usually ends up tightening its licence because of abuse at scale, so obserae keeps a few structural limits rather than an unverifiable “fair use” clause.

A structural limit is one a homelabber or a five-person shop barely notices (a single administrator account is plenty for them) but that an 80-person company trying to deploy free at scale feels immediately. It keeps the line clear without anyone having to play policeman — and without punishing the people the free tier is for.

I run a bigger company / an MSP / a paid service on it?

Then you need a commercial licence (EULA art. 3) — for any organisation above the small-business threshold, for offering obserae as a managed service (MSSP / SOC-as-a-service), or for paid services (audit, consulting, integration, training) delivered to a client above the threshold. One narrow exception (art. 4): an independent consultant may run a one-off audit of ≤ 30 days on a larger client’s infrastructure, provided the software is removed and the data purged at the end and the report states that permanent use requires a commercial licence.

Commercial contact: licensing@spartan-conseil.fr.

Which features will become paid?

A small, stable set — and we name them now rather than springing them on you later. All of them are free and open during the alpha:

  • Users & access management — multiple user accounts, groups, role-based access control (RBAC) and API tokens. (The single administrator login the GUI always requires stays part of the core product.)
  • Audit log — the tamper-evident who-did-what-when journal.
  • Connectors to major commercial platforms — the exact list is still open, but, for example, a connector that ships obserae’s alerts into a SIEM such as IBM QRadar will be part of the commercial licence.
  • Commercial IP-enrichment sources — premium, cyber-grade enrichment feeds. (The free public sources — AWS, Azure, GCP, FireHOL — stay free.)

The principle is simple: if you can afford cyber-grade tools and data sources, you can afford to support obserae too. The free tier keeps everything an individual or a small team needs; the paid tier is where obserae plugs into the expensive commercial ecosystem.

Can the terms change under me later?

Not for a version you already have. The licence is versioned per release: the terms that shipped with your version are yours to keep, for that version, for good (EULA art. 2.3). If the terms ever change, the change applies only to future versions — downloading one release does not put you at the mercy of whatever a later one decides. Nobody is taken hostage.

Does obserae phone home or send telemetry?

No. The EULA commits to it contractually (art. 7): no usage telemetry, no outbound contact with Spartan Conseil’s or any third party’s servers, and no online licence verification. obserae is built to run fully air-gapped.

The only outbound network traffic obserae makes is traffic you turn on:

  • IP-enrichment refreshes — downloading public IP-range lists from AWS, Azure, Google and FireHOL. These are downloads of public data; nothing about you is uploaded. Turn them off with enrichment.enabled: false.
  • Alert delivery — webhooks / Gotify to the destinations you configure, never to a vendor endpoint.

What does the publisher see about my data?

Nothing. Your flows, cartography, detection rules, sessions and reports are your sole property; Spartan Conseil has no access to them and claims no rights over them (EULA art. 6.3).

Do I need a licence key or internet access to run it?

No key, no activation, no online check. obserae runs entirely offline — core ingestion, queries and the GUI have no external dependency.

What happens if the project stops, or Spartan Conseil disappears?

Your installation keeps working. There is no remote kill-switch and no licence check to fail, so an installed copy keeps running with no internet and no contact with anyone. The licence text and binaries are bundled locally, and your data stays yours.

Can I modify, redistribute or reverse-engineer it?

No (EULA art. 5) — beyond the non-waivable interoperability rights French law grants under art. L122-6-1 of the Intellectual Property Code. Spartan Conseil is the sole authorised distributor, through its official channels only (github.com/spartan-conseil/obserae and ghcr.io/spartan-conseil/obserae).

Can I contribute code?

No — obserae does not accept code contributions, and that is deliberate: a single owner keeps the intellectual property clean and the project’s direction coherent. Issues are very welcome, though — bug reports, reproduction cases and feature suggestions genuinely help. Open them at https://github.com/spartan-conseil/obserae/issues.

Is there support or an SLA?

The free licence comes with no support obligation — updates are published at the publisher’s discretion (EULA art. 8). Technical support, priority fixes, SLAs and custom development are part of commercial agreements.

Support contact: support@spartan-conseil.fr.

Anything it must not be used for?

Yes — obserae is not designed or certified for life-critical or high-criticality systems (medical devices, air/rail/maritime traffic control, nuclear or Seveso-classified sites, weapons/defence systems, or critical infrastructure without prior agreement). See EULA art. 10.

Where are the binding terms?

In the repository and in every release / Docker image:

  • EULA.txt — French, the legally binding version.
  • EULA.en.txt — English, courtesy translation (the French version prevails in case of conflict).

Online copy: https://github.com/spartan-conseil/obserae/blob/main/EULA.txt. Commercial licensing: licensing@spartan-conseil.fr.

Download the licence

The full End-User Licence Agreement, as bundled with every release:

French — legally binding · .txt English — courtesy translation · .txt