RealNAS

Notices

Legal & Licensing

This page provides provenance, licenses, trademarks, disclaimers, privacy details, and contact details.

This is not legal advice. Source-tree license files and per-file copyright headers are authoritative where this page is only a summary.

1. Project provenance

RealNAS is derived from zVault, a community-maintained continuation of TrueNAS CORE 13.3. TrueNAS CORE was a product of iX Systems, Inc. RealNAS is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by iX Systems, the TrueNAS project, or the zVault project. References to those projects identify provenance and trademark ownership only.

Source for RealNAS-distributed binaries is available in the project's public repository. The repository preserves the upstream commit history available at the point of fork, upstream file headers, and this project's later modifications.

2. Software licenses

RealNAS includes code under several free-software licenses and keeps inherited components under their original terms.

New RealNAS code
2-clause BSD (SPDX: BSD-2-Clause) for files newly authored by this project that do not derive from upstream code.
Inherited middleware
GPLv3 (SPDX: GPL-3.0-or-later) and LGPLv3 (SPDX: LGPL-3.0-or-later) according to original file headers. Modifications stay under the license of the modified file.
FreeBSD base system
Used unmodified from the FreeBSD project. Licensing varies by file across BSD 2-, 3-, and 4-clause variants (FreeBSD license overview).
OpenZFS
CDDL-1.0 (SPDX: CDDL-1.0). Used as packaged by FreeBSD and not modified by this project.
Samba
GPLv3 (SPDX: GPL-3.0-or-later). Used as packaged by the FreeBSD ports tree and not modified by this project.
Python and standard library
PSF License (SPDX: Python-2.0). Used as installed from FreeBSD ports.
Web UI dependencies
Bootstrap (MIT), Mermaid (MIT), Source Serif 4 / Inter / JetBrains Mono (SIL OFL 1.1). Loaded from public CDNs and not redistributed by this project.

The canonical license texts are included in the source distribution under LICENSES/. The top-level LICENSE and NOTICE files summarize required attribution.

3. Modifications notice

RealNAS preserves upstream attribution. Modifications to inherited files are recorded in git history. Upstream file headers are retained, and this project adds its own copyright notices for substantive changes.

4. Third-party trademarks

The following marks are referenced to identify the projects or products they belong to. These references do not imply affiliation, endorsement, sponsorship, or partnership.

  • TrueNAS and FreeNAS are trademarks of iX Systems, Inc.
  • FreeBSD is a registered trademark of the FreeBSD Foundation.
  • ZFS is a trademark whose ownership has changed historically; OpenZFS is a trademark of the OpenZFS project.
  • Samba is a trademark of the Samba Team.
  • Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
  • Python is a registered trademark of the Python Software Foundation.

All other trademarks belong to their respective owners. To report a trademark concern, use the contact address in section 12.

5. Logo and branding

The RealNAS mark is an original work commissioned for this project. It draws on BSD-daemon iconography associated with Marshall Kirk McKusick's "Beastie" mascot for the BSD family of operating systems. Concerns about the mark, including from McKusick or his representatives, can be raised through the contact address below.

6. Disclaimer of warranty

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NONINFRINGEMENT. You operate RealNAS on your own hardware at your own risk. Storage software can lose data; back up anything you cannot afford to lose.

7. Limitation of liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL THE PROJECT, ITS CONTRIBUTORS, OR THEIR EMPLOYERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES, OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT, OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF, OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

8. Patent statement

Where inherited licenses grant patent rights, those grants apply unchanged. The RealNAS project does not assert patents over the included code and grants no additional patent rights beyond those provided by the applicable licenses. Contributors grant the patent rights, if any, required by the license attached to the file they modify.

9. Privacy and data

Current software and website behavior is as follows:

  • The RealNAS software does not initiate network connections to hosts controlled by the RealNAS project. There is no telemetry, anonymous usage reporting, diagnostic upload, or project-controlled update check.
  • A default installation initiates outbound traffic only for configured services such as SMTP, replication, syslog forwarding, or package updates from a chosen mirror.
  • This website sets no cookies, runs no analytics scripts, and includes no third-party trackers. Static-host HTTP logs are subject to the hosting provider's logging behavior and project configuration.
  • There is no RealNAS account system, mailing-list signup, or email harvesting on this site.
  • If this changes, the change will be described here and in release notes before it ships.

10. Security disclosures

Report suspected vulnerabilities privately to the contact address below with “security” in the subject line. Public disclosure timing will be coordinated with the reporter where possible. The project does not currently operate a bug bounty.

11. Source availability

The complete corresponding source for RealNAS-distributed binaries is available under the licenses that govern that source. The canonical public source location will be linked here once a public mirror is established. Until then, source is available on request from the contact address below.

12. Use of LLMs in development

To help control costs, LLM assistants are used as tools during development for code generation, refactoring, documentation drafting, and review. Authorship and accountability rest with human contributors. Every commit and release passes through the project's smoke gates, unit tests, and architectural-contract checks before it ships, and no part of that gate is relaxed because a tool helped draft the change.

13. Reporting concerns & contact

For intellectual-property claims, license-compliance concerns, security disclosures, suspected trademark misuse, or other legal questions, write to legal@realnas.io. Include the relevant file, page, version, and concern so the project can investigate. Ordinary support questions belong on the project's community channels, not this address.