Third-Party Licenses
VRGS is built on a large body of open-source software, together with a small number of commercially licensed components. This page lists what is distributed with VRGS, what each component is used for, and the license it is provided under.
This page is about the software inside VRGS. For activating your own VRGS license, see Licensing Options.
Full license texts are installed alongside VRGS as Licenses3rdParty in the program folder, and are also available here:
Two components carry their own notice files in the program folder: SkyWater-Seg.txt and MediaPipe-Selfie.txt.
Last reviewed: 6 August 2026. Versions are those current at that date; the licenses apply to whichever version is actually shipped.
Summary for legal and procurement review
If you are assessing VRGS for use in your organisation, these are the points that usually matter.
No strong copyleft. Nothing distributed with VRGS is licensed under the GPL or AGPL. There is no component that imposes source-disclosure obligations on VRGS itself, or on your own work produced with it.
Three components are dual-licensed, and VRGS uses the permissive option in each case:
| Component | Offered under | VRGS uses |
|---|---|---|
| Shapelib | MIT or LGPL-2.0-or-later | MIT |
| Zstandard | BSD-3-Clause or GPL-2.0-only | BSD-3-Clause |
| Mbed TLS | Apache-2.0 or GPL-2.0-or-later | Apache-2.0 |
Three components use weak, file-level copyleft (MPL-2.0): Eigen, CDT and the Mozilla CA certificate bundle. The MPL applies per file, not to the program that uses those files, so it creates no obligation for VRGS or for your data. All three are used unmodified; VRGeoscience will supply their source on request.
Commercial use is permitted for every open-source component listed below. The machine-learning models have their own terms — see Machine learning models.
Geospatial and coordinate systems
| Component | Purpose in VRGS | License |
|---|---|---|
| PROJ 9.7.1 | Coordinate reference system definition and transformation | MIT |
| EPSG Geodetic Parameter Dataset | CRS and datum parameters used by PROJ | EPSG Terms of Use |
| libgeotiff 1.7.4 | GeoTIFF georeferencing tags | MIT |
| libtiff 4.7.1 | TIFF raster import and export | libtiff |
| Shapelib 1.6.2 | ESRI Shapefile import and export | MIT |
| libLAS 1.8.1 | LAS point cloud reading | BSD-3-Clause |
| LASzip 3.5.0 | LAZ compressed point cloud codec | Apache-2.0 |
| Cesium Native | 3D Tiles and glTF streaming, Cesium ion terrain and imagery | Apache-2.0 |
| S2 Geometry | Spherical geometry indexing | Apache-2.0 |
Point clouds, meshes and geometry
| Component | Purpose in VRGS | License |
|---|---|---|
| Point Cloud Library (PCL) 1.15.1 | Point cloud filters, search and surface reconstruction | BSD-3-Clause |
| Eigen 5.0.1 | Linear algebra throughout analysis and solvers | MPL-2.0 |
| nanoflann 1.9.0 | Nearest-neighbour queries | BSD-3-Clause |
| FLANN | Approximate nearest-neighbour search | BSD-3-Clause |
| Qhull 8.0.2 | Convex hull and Delaunay triangulation | Qhull license |
| CDT 1.4.4 | Constrained Delaunay triangulation | MPL-2.0 |
| poly2tri | Polygon triangulation | BSD-3-Clause |
| Clipper | Polygon boolean operations | Boost Software License 1.0 |
| xatlas | UV atlas generation for photo texture baking | MIT |
| meshoptimizer | Mesh optimisation | MIT |
| Draco 1.5.7 | Mesh and point cloud compression | Apache-2.0 |
| SPZ | Gaussian splat compression | MIT |
| Assimp 6.0.4 | 3D model import and export | BSD-3-Clause |
| libE57 Reference Implementation 1.1.332 | E57 point cloud import and export | Boost Software License 1.0 |
| METIS | Graph partitioning | Apache-2.0 |
Rendering
| Component | Purpose in VRGS | License |
|---|---|---|
| Vulkan Headers and Loader 1.4.335 | Vulkan rendering backend | Apache-2.0 |
| volk 1.4.335 | Vulkan function loader | MIT |
| Vulkan Memory Allocator 3.3.0 | GPU memory allocation | MIT |
| GLEW 2.3.1 | OpenGL extension loading | BSD-3-Clause / MIT |
| OpenGL Mathematics (GLM) 1.0.3 | Vector and matrix maths | MIT |
| OpenXR Loader 1.1.54 | VR and XR headset support | Apache-2.0 |
| KTX-Software | KTX2 texture transcoding | Apache-2.0 |
| libsquish 1.15 | DXT texture compression | MIT |
| stb | Image loading helpers | MIT / public domain |
| NVIDIA Texture Tools 3 | GPU texture compression | Commercial |
Imaging, computer vision and photogrammetry
| Component | Purpose in VRGS | License |
|---|---|---|
| OpenCV 4.12.0 | Image processing, feature detection, calibration, video | Apache-2.0 |
| libjpeg-turbo 3.1.3 | JPEG encode and decode | BSD-3-Clause |
| libpng 1.6.55 | PNG encode and decode | libpng-2.0 |
| libwebp 1.6.0 | WebP encode and decode | BSD-3-Clause |
| OpenJPEG 2.5.4 | JPEG 2000 encode and decode | BSD-2-Clause |
| Ceres Solver 2.2.0 | Bundle adjustment and least-squares solving | Apache-2.0 |
| OpenBLAS 0.3.29 | Linear algebra kernels | BSD-3-Clause |
| gflags 2.3.0, glog 0.7.1 | Flags and logging | BSD-3-Clause |
| quirc 1.2 | QR code detection | ISC |
VRGS is built without OpenCV's contrib and nonfree modules, so it contains no patent-encumbered feature detectors.
Machine learning runtime
| Component | Purpose in VRGS | License |
|---|---|---|
| ONNX Runtime (GPU) 1.25.1 | Neural network inference | MIT |
| NVIDIA CUDA runtime, cuBLAS, cuFFT, cuDNN 9 | GPU execution for ONNX Runtime | NVIDIA redistributable |
| FAISS 1.13.2 | Vector search for in-application help | MIT |
| FlatBuffers | Serialisation | Apache-2.0 |
Networking, data and file formats
| Component | Purpose in VRGS | License |
|---|---|---|
| libcurl 8.18.0 | HTTP and HTTPS client | curl license |
| OpenSSL 3.6.1 | TLS and cryptography | Apache-2.0 |
| Mozilla CA certificate bundle | Root certificates for TLS verification | MPL-2.0 |
| Mbed TLS 3.6.4 | TLS for WebSocket connections | Apache-2.0 |
| IXWebSocket 11.4.6 | WebSocket client for Virtual Field Trips | BSD-3-Clause |
| Boost 1.90.0 | HTTP, filesystem and graph algorithms | Boost Software License 1.0 |
| Asio 1.32.0 | Asynchronous I/O | Boost Software License 1.0 |
| Protocol Buffers 6.33.4 | Virtual Field Trip messaging | BSD-3-Clause |
| Abseil | Support library for Protocol Buffers and Cesium | Apache-2.0 |
| nlohmann/json 3.12.0 | JSON parsing | MIT |
| RapidJSON, JsonCpp | JSON parsing | MIT |
| pugixml 1.15 | XML parsing | MIT |
| Xerces-C++ 3.3.0 | XML parsing for LandXML and related formats | Apache-2.0 |
| SQLite 3.51.2 | Project database and help index | Public domain |
| libzip 1.11.4, kubazip, minizip | ZIP archive handling | BSD-3-Clause, MIT, zlib |
| zlib 1.3.1, zlib-ng 2.3.3 | Deflate compression | zlib |
| Zstandard 1.5.7 | Compression | BSD-3-Clause |
| LZ4 1.10.0 | Compression | BSD-2-Clause |
| Brotli 1.2.0 | Compression for web and tile transport | MIT |
| bzip2 1.0.8 | Compression | bzip2 license |
| XZ Utils 5.8.2 | Compression | 0BSD |
| fmt, spdlog, Async++, ada, modp_b64 | Formatting, logging, scheduling, URL and base64 support | MIT and Apache-2.0 |
| UTF8-CPP 4.0.9 | UTF-8 handling | Boost Software License 1.0 |
| HTML Tidy 5.8.0 | HTML clean-up | W3C-style permissive |
| Sentry Native 0.13.0 | Crash reporting | MIT |
| miniaudio 0.11.24 | Microphone capture and playback for voice chat | Public domain |
| Opus 1.5.2 | Voice codec | BSD-3-Clause |
| Python 3.13 | In-application scripting console | Python Software Foundation License |
User interface
| Component | Purpose in VRGS | License |
|---|---|---|
| BCGControlBar Pro 33.20 | Ribbon, docking panes, property grid and themes | Commercial |
| Microsoft Edge WebView2 | Embedded browser for chat, editor and map panels | Microsoft redistributable |
| C++/WinRT, Windows Implementation Library | Windows API support | MIT |
| marked 15.0.12 | Markdown rendering in panels | MIT |
| CodeMirror 6 | Python script editor | MIT |
| Tiptap and ProseMirror | Rich text editor | MIT |
| Leaflet 1.9.4 | Interactive map panel | BSD-2-Clause |
| Leaflet.markercluster 1.5.3 | Map marker clustering | MIT |
Machine learning models
Models fall into two groups, and the distinction matters for licensing.
Installed with VRGS
| Model | Purpose in VRGS | License |
|---|---|---|
| BGE-small-en-v1.5 | Text embeddings for in-application help search | MIT |
| SkyWater-Seg | Sky masking for dense multi-view stereo | MIT, per the publisher's model card |
| MediaPipe Selfie Segmenter | Camera background blur in Virtual Field Trips | Apache-2.0 |
Downloaded on demand
The segmentation and dense-reconstruction models are not included in the installer. They are downloaded the first time you use the corresponding feature, as described in AI and Machine Learning Requirements, and remain subject to their publishers' terms.
| Model | Purpose in VRGS | Publisher terms |
|---|---|---|
| Segment Anything Model 2.1 | Interactive image segmentation | Meta Platforms, Apache-2.0 |
| Segment Anything Model 3 | Promptable concept segmentation | Meta Platforms, see publisher's model license |
| CasMVSNet | Learned multi-view stereo depth | See publisher's model license |
| VRGS fracture segmentation | Fracture trace detection | Trained by VRGeoscience |
If your organisation applies model-license review to AI features, treat the downloaded models as third-party content obtained at runtime rather than as part of the VRGS distribution.
Commercially licensed components
The components below are used under commercial agreements held by VRGeoscience. Their source is not distributed with VRGS, and no rights in them are granted to VRGS users beyond use as part of VRGS.
| Component | Supplier |
|---|---|
| BCGControlBar Pro | BCGSoft Ltd. |
| LicenseSpring SDK | LicenseSpring |
| Reprise License Manager | Reprise Software, Inc. |
| NVIDIA Texture Tools 3 | NVIDIA Corporation |
| CUDA Runtime, cuBLAS, cuFFT, cuDNN | NVIDIA Corporation |
| Microsoft Edge WebView2 | Microsoft Corporation |
Requesting source code
For the MPL-2.0 components (Eigen, CDT and the Mozilla CA bundle), and for any other component whose license grants you a right to the source, contact VRGeoscience and we will supply it.