RealNAS

Notices

Legal & Licensing

Provenance, third-party licenses, trademark acknowledgments, disclaimers, and how to reach the project on legal questions. Written plainly so it can be read.

This page collects the licensing, attribution, and disclaimer information that applies to the RealNAS software and to this website. It is provided for transparency. It is not legal advice. The licenses and copyright headers in the source tree are authoritative where this page is 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 an independent project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by iX Systems, the TrueNAS project, or the zVault project. References to those projects on this page identify code provenance and trademark holders only.

The source corresponding to any RealNAS-distributed binary is available in the project's public repository. The repository preserves the full upstream commit history that was available at the point of fork, the per-file copyright headers from upstream, and the modifications made by this project on top.

2. Software licenses

RealNAS is composed of code under several free licenses. The project respects the original terms of every inherited component and contributes new code under permissive licenses where compatible.

New RealNAS code
2-clause BSD (SPDX: BSD-2-Clause). Applies to files newly authored by this project that do not derive from upstream.
Inherited middleware
GPLv3 (SPDX: GPL-3.0-or-later) and LGPLv3 (SPDX: LGPL-3.0-or-later) per the original file headers. Modifications are released under the same license as the file being modified.
FreeBSD base system
Used unmodified from the FreeBSD project. BSD 2-, 3-, and 4-clause variants per file (FreeBSD license overview).
OpenZFS
CDDL-1.0 (SPDX: CDDL-1.0). Used as packaged by FreeBSD; not modified by this project.
Samba
GPLv3 (SPDX: GPL-3.0-or-later). Used as packaged by the FreeBSD ports tree; 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; their licenses govern their use.

The canonical text of each license is included in the source distribution under the LICENSES/ directory. The top-level LICENSE and NOTICE files in the source tree summarize and attribute as required.

3. Modifications notice

In compliance with the source-distribution clauses of the inherited licenses, RealNAS preserves attribution of upstream contributions. Modifications to inherited files are recorded in the project's git history, which is the authoritative record of who changed what and when. Per-file copyright headers from upstream are preserved; the project adds its own copyright notice alongside the upstream notice where it has made substantive changes, rather than replacing the original.

4. Third-party trademarks

The following marks are referenced by name on this site or in the software for purposes of identifying the projects they belong to (nominative fair use). None of these references implies 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 hands 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.
  • Anthropic and Claude are trademarks of Anthropic, PBC. OpenAI and Codex are trademarks of OpenAI, L.L.C. Both are referenced in this page's AI disclosure below.

All other trademarks belong to their respective owners. If we have used a mark inappropriately on this site or in our materials, contact us via the address in section 13 and we will correct or remove it.

5. Logo and branding

The RealNAS mark is an original work commissioned for this project. It draws visually on the long-established BSD-daemon iconography commonly associated with Marshall Kirk McKusick's "Beastie" mascot of the BSD family of operating systems. We are aware of the conventional terms McKusick has set for use of Beastie and consider our usage consistent with them. Concerns about the mark, including from McKusick or his representatives, can be raised via the contact below and will be addressed promptly.

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. This restates a position already required by the inherited licenses. 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. This is consistent with the warranty disclaimers in every license under which RealNAS is distributed.

8. Patent statement

Where the licenses governing inherited code grant patent rights (notably GPLv3), those grants apply unchanged. The RealNAS project itself does not assert patents over the included code and grants no additional patent rights beyond those granted by the underlying licenses. Contributors to the project are deemed to grant whatever the license attached to the file they modify already grants.

9. Privacy and data

These commitments are binding statements, not marketing language. They describe what the software and this website actually do.

  • The RealNAS software does not initiate network connections to any host controlled by the RealNAS project. There is no telemetry, no anonymous usage reporting, no diagnostic upload, no “check for updates” against a project-controlled endpoint.
  • The only outbound traffic a default installation initiates is what the operator explicitly configures: SMTP to a relay you choose, replication to a destination you choose, package updates from a mirror you choose.
  • This website sets no cookies. It runs no analytics scripts. It includes no third-party trackers. Logs of HTTP requests to the static host are subject only to whatever default the chosen host produces and the operator (currently, the project maintainers) configures.
  • There is no RealNAS account system, no mailing list signup on this site, and no harvesting of email addresses from any source.
  • If any of the above changes, the change will be described here, dated, and announced in release notes before it ships. We will not silently re-version this section.

10. Security disclosures

Suspected vulnerabilities should be reported 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. AI assistance disclosure

This section answers two distinct questions that are often conflated.

Were AI tools used to build RealNAS?

Yes. Large-language-model assistants (notably Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's Codex) were used during development for drafting prose, generating boilerplate code, reviewing diffs, and producing supporting tooling and documentation. All AI-assisted output was reviewed and accepted by human maintainers, who are responsible for everything in this repository and on this website regardless of how it was produced. AI was used as an assistant, not as an authority.

We are not embarrassed about this and we are not hiding it. Disclosure is the appropriate posture: a reader is entitled to know that any given paragraph or function may have been drafted with model assistance, so they can apply whatever scrutiny they consider appropriate. The standard remains correctness, not provenance.

Does RealNAS itself use AI, send data to AI services, or include AI features?

No. RealNAS is a storage management system. It does not call out to any AI service in its normal operation. No data managed by RealNAS (pool contents, snapshot data, share definitions, user records, alerts, logs, or anything else stored or proxied through the system) is transmitted to any AI model, training pipeline, or third-party inference service by the RealNAS software.

If a future RealNAS feature ever incorporates model-based functionality (for example, anomaly detection trained against your own historical telemetry), it will be:

  • opt-in, off by default;
  • described in detail on this page before the release that introduces it;
  • capable of running locally on the operator's hardware where feasible, with hosted inference as a clearly-labeled alternative rather than the only option;
  • never used to transmit operator data to any party outside the operator's chosen scope.

“Built with AI assistance” and “sends your data to AI” are not the same thing. The first is a development-process disclosure. The second is a runtime behavior of the software. We do the first and explicitly do not do the second.

12. Source availability

The complete corresponding source for any binary RealNAS distributes is made available under the licenses that govern that source. The canonical public source location will be linked here once a public mirror is established. In the interim, source is available on request from the contact address below.

13. Reporting concerns & contact

For intellectual-property claims, license-compliance concerns, security disclosures, suspected trademark misuse by this project, or other legal questions, write to legal@realnas.io. Please include enough information for us to investigate (which file, which page, which version, what the concern is). Ordinary support questions belong on the project's community channels, not this address.