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Managed Cloud Boundary

What lives in core vs cloud.

QQueue uses an open-core model in a single repository:

  • The core platform remains AGPL-3.0-only.
  • Managed-cloud Phase 7 code lives under apps/cloud/.
  • apps/cloud/ has its own commercial license.

The open-source core should remain genuinely useful for self-hosters. The proprietary cloud layer should focus on managed convenience, billing, deliverability, abuse prevention, and hosted operations.

AGPL Core

Keep these in the AGPL core:

  • Authentication primitives
  • Organizations
  • SMTP connections
  • Contacts
  • Templates
  • Campaigns
  • Transactional API
  • Queues
  • Workers
  • Shared schemas/types

Proprietary Cloud

Keep these in apps/cloud/:

  • Billing provider integrations
  • Plans, subscriptions, seats, billing customer IDs, and invoices
  • Usage limits and per-plan quota enforcement policy
  • Hosted onboarding flows
  • Managed shared or pooled sending infrastructure
  • Abuse controls
  • Deliverability controls
  • Cloud admin dashboards
  • Advanced deliverability features
  • Reputation scoring
  • Warmup automation
  • Bounce intelligence
  • ISP-specific recommendations
  • Inbox placement analytics
  • Shared IP pool management
  • Multi-tenant hosted operations
  • Domain verification automation for the hosted service
  • Per-tenant operational controls and throttling policy

Dependency Direction

Core code must not import from apps/cloud.

Cloud code may import from core packages and apps when it builds on stable platform primitives. If a cloud feature needs a reusable primitive that is also valuable for self-hosted operators, add that primitive to the AGPL core and keep only the cloud policy or integration in apps/cloud.

Tenant Boundary

Treat Organization as the initial tenant, workspace, and billing boundary unless a future product requirement proves a separate Workspace model is necessary. Before adding a separate workspace layer, document the user story that cannot be served by organizations alone.

Phase 7 Gates

Before production cloud code ships:

  • Have the commercial license draft reviewed by qualified legal counsel.
  • Enforce contributor sign-off or CLA checks in CI.
  • Run pnpm license:audit.
  • Audit all API and worker database access for tenant scoping.
  • Add cross-organization access tests for any touched module.