Open-Source
& Third-Party
Notices.

The components listed below reflect the current shipping products, netTAK, sdrTAK, loraTAK, and digiTAK. Lists are maintained per release; the exhaustive, versioned list for each product also ships inside that product's software distribution. Contact us through our contact form for the notices or any license text for a specific product and version.

xTAK products are built on the shoulders of the open-source community, and we are grateful for it. xTAK software incorporates and runs on third-party open-source components, each provided under its own license. Those licenses — not our Terms — govern your rights in those components. This page provides the attributions and notices those licenses require.

xTAK's own software is proprietary and is not open-source software. Inclusion of open-source components does not place xTAK-authored code under an open-source license. Component names and marks belong to their respective owners; see our Copyright & Trademark Notice.

Components — netTAK

netTAK's management plane is a single Go binary; everything compiled into it is permissively licensed (no GPL/LGPL/AGPL is linked into the binary). Copyleft components ship alongside netTAK as firmware, kernel modules, or separate operating-system processes, under their own licenses. Each component is used under the terms of its respective license; full license texts are available from each upstream project and are included with the software distribution where required.

Compiled into the netTAK binary

Redistributed firmware & kernel modules

These ship with netTAK but run as firmware blobs or kernel modules — separate from, and not linked into, the netTAK binary. Morse Micro firmware ships only on hardware containing a Morse Micro HaLow chip.

Runtime OS packages (separate processes)

Invoked as separate processes or kernel facilities and distributed alongside netTAK — never linked into it. Source for the GPL packages is available from the Debian / Raspberry Pi OS archives, and under the source offer below.

netTAK also redistributes the transitive .deb dependencies of the above (e.g. glibc / libc6 LGPL-2.1+, libstdc++6 / libgcc GPL-3.0 with GCC Runtime Library Exception, libsystemd0 / libudev1 LGPL-2.1+, libpython3.11 PSF-2.0, and peers), unmodified from Debian 12 / Raspberry Pi OS, each under its own license; source available via the written offer below.

Components — sdrTAK

sdrTAK is a Python service that decodes SDR radio signals into TAK CoT. Its own code is proprietary; the SDR decoders and drivers it uses run as separate operating-system processes that sdrTAK drives over a command line and pipes — never linked into sdrTAK's own program (mere aggregation). Each component is used under its own license. The exhaustive, versioned list ships with the software as THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.txt and licenses/BOM.txt, with the verbatim license texts in licenses/; the principal components are summarized below.

Decoders built & distributed by xTAK

SDR drivers, SoapySDR modules & runtime libraries

Redistributed as unmodified Debian packages alongside sdrTAK, invoked as separate processes or loaded as device libraries — never linked into sdrTAK's own code. Copyleft packages are covered by the source offer below; their source is also permanently archived at the Debian snapshot service. Permissive components (Boost, MIT/X11, BSD, Apache-2.0, PSF, …) are attributed via each package's own copyright file installed alongside it.

Summary only — the complete per-package list with exact versions ships inside sdrTAK (THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.txt + licenses/BOM.txt). airspy_adsb (Airspy proprietary, non-commercial) is not distributed with sdrTAK; AirSpy users self-install it. dump978-fa is built decoder-only, so FlightAware's skyaware978 web assets are not shipped.

License elections. Where a bundled component is offered under a choice of licenses, xTAK elects the permissive option for its redistribution: libdbus-1-3 is offered under “AFL-2.1 or GPL-2.0-or-later”, and xTAK elects the Academic Free License v2.1.

Components — loraTAK

loraTAK bridges Meshtastic LoRa mesh radios into the TAK ecosystem (Cursor-on-Target). It runs as two separate programs: proprietary loraTAK-core, and a mesh-bridge — a separate helper process, licensed under GPL-3.0, that owns the Meshtastic radio. The two communicate over a local socket; loraTAK-core does not link the mesh-bridge or the Meshtastic library. The applicable license and copyright files are installed alongside these components in the loraTAK software distribution.

loraTAK-core (proprietary) — third-party dependency

loraTAK mesh-bridge (separate GPL-3.0 process) — Meshtastic + its dependency tree

The mesh-bridge is a separate program licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 — the same arm's-length pattern by which sdrTAK ships its separate GPL decoders. You may obtain the corresponding source code for the mesh-bridge and the GPL/LGPL components above, for at least the period required by the applicable license, by contacting us through our contact form — the same written offer that applies to the other copyleft components on this page.

loraTAK — bundled TAK iconsets

loraTAK bundles the standard TAK iconset collection — the same icon sets distributed with ATAK and WinTAK (Default, Generic, FEMA, GeoOps, Google, OSM, Public Safety Air, Responder, FalconView, and Incident Management) — so markers render consistently across the TAK ecosystem. These sets are redistributed as they ship with the TAK software. Where an individual set carries a specific attribution requirement, we provide it: the emergency-responder symbology (Responder Icons) is © NAPSG Foundation, used under CC-BY-4.0; the OpenStreetMap-derived map icons (OSM) are public domain (CC0); the FEMA, GeoOps wildland-fire, and Incident Management (ICS) symbology are U.S. Government works in the public domain. For the source or license of any specific icon, contact us through our contact form.

loraTAK — TAK protocol message definitions

loraTAK decodes TAK Protocol Version 1 (the protobuf mesh/stream Cursor-on-Target format) using generated Python message stubs (protobufModel/). These stubs are generated from the TAK Protocol V1 .proto schema published by the TAK Product Center (package atakmap.commoncommo.protobuf.v1; ATAK-CIV / TAK Server), and are redistributed via FreeTAKServer. The upstream schema is licensed GPL-3.0 (TAK-Product-Center/atak-civ); the generated stubs as vendored are licensed under the Eclipse Public License 2.0 (FreeTAKServer). Corresponding source for these components is available from the linked repositories and under the written offer below.

Components — digiTAK

digiTAK (codename cot_radio) is a Python service that bridges amateur radio and APRS into the TAK ecosystem (Cursor-on-Target). Its own code is proprietary. Its copyleft components each run as a separate operating-system process that digiTAK drives over an arm's-length interface — never linked into digiTAK's own program (mere aggregation). The exhaustive, versioned list ships with the software as THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.txt; the principal components are summarized below.

Copyleft components — separate processes (aggregation)

Neither is linked into cot_radio's proprietary code: aprslib runs inside a separate helper process that cot_radio talks to over a pipe (cot_radio does not import aprslib), and direwolf runs as a separate daemon that cot_radio connects to over KISS-over-TCP. Both are therefore aggregated with, not combined into, cot_radio. Source is available from upstream and the Debian archive, and under the written offer below.

Vendored Python libraries

Bundled Debian packages

Bundled data

Components — offline maps

The offline map stack (mbtileserver) is available with digiTAK, netTAK, and sdrTAK. The tile server and renderers run as separate processes; the map data carries the attribution requirements reproduced below.

Tile server & render tooling

Map & imagery data — attribution required

Map attribution (required). The displayed map credit is “© OpenMapTiles © OpenStreetMap contributors”, with USDA NAIP on satellite / hybrid layers, as required by ODbL-1.0 and CC-BY-4.0. Tiles self-generated from raw OpenStreetMap data are distributed under the ODbL, honoring its attribution and share-alike terms.

Source code for copyleft components

Some components are licensed under the GNU General Public License or other copyleft licenses that entitle you to the corresponding source code — including the Linux kernel, the morse_driver kernel modules, and GPL OS packages (dnsmasq, batctl, ebtables, bridge-utils, rfkill, chrony, and others). Source for these is available from the Debian and Raspberry Pi OS archives. In addition, as a written offer under GPL-2.0 §3(b), GPL-3.0 §6, and the source-availability requirement of the Eclipse Public License 2.0 (§3), you may obtain the corresponding source code for any such component distributed with any xTAK product, for at least the period required by the applicable license, by contacting us through our contact form with the product name and version. Where a component's own license includes a written-offer or source-availability requirement, that requirement controls. If any component listed on this page as permissive is later found to include copyleft-licensed portions, this written offer applies to it as well.

For sdrTAK, the corresponding source for the copyleft decoders we compile (readsb, AIS-catcher, dump978-fa) is published at github.com/adamstern2000/xTAK/releases, and the source for the unmodified Debian packages is permanently archived at snapshot.debian.org. The same written offer (GPL-3.0 §6 / GPL-2.0 §3(b), valid three years) also ships inside sdrTAK's THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.txt.

Full license texts

The complete text of each component's license is included in the software distribution (for example, in an accompanying notices file) and is available from each project's official source. If you need a copy of any license text or notice and cannot locate it, contact us through our contact form.

Corrections

If you believe an attribution here is incomplete or incorrect, please let us know through our contact form and we will address it.

Effective / last updated: 2026-07-13