Frequently-asked Questions

Is SpiceDB Open Source?

SpiceDB is developed as an Apache 2.0-licensed (opens in a new tab) open-source, community-first effort.

Large contributions must follow a proposal and feedback process regardless of whether the authors are maintainers, AuthZed employees, or brand new to the community.

Other AuthZed open source projects are typically licensed Apache 2.0 (opens in a new tab) unless they are a fork of another codebase. Example code is MIT-licensed (opens in a new tab) so that they can be modified and adopted into any codebase.

Not all code produced at AuthZed is open source. There are two conditions under which code is kept proprietary:

• Functionality is minimally applicable to the community and is directly tied to enterprise environments
• Functionality is tied to AuthZed's infrastructure and is not widely applicable to all deployments

Does SpiceDB secure IT infrastructure?

SpiceDB is a database designed to be integrated into applications.

There are some organizations with homegrown IT use-cases that use SpiceDB. However, for most IT use cases, this is probably more low-level than what you need.

We recommend looking into tools designed around specific IT workflows such as auditing (Orca (opens in a new tab), PrismaCloud (opens in a new tab)), goverance, access management (Indent (opens in a new tab), ConductorOne (opens in a new tab)).

Is SpiceDB a policy engine?

SpiceDB is not a policy engine.

SpiceDB was inspired by Zanzibar, which popularized the concept of Relationship-based access control (ReBAC). ReBAC systems offer correctness, performance, and scaling guarantees that are not possible in systems designed purely around policy. Notably, policy engines cannot implement Reverse Indices.

However, there are some scenarios where ReBAC systems can benefit from dynamic enforcement. For these scenarios, SpiceDB supports Caveats as a light-weight form of policy that avoids pitfalls present in many other systems.

How can I get involved with SpiceDB?

The best first step is to join Discord (opens in a new tab).

Discord is a great place to chat with other community members and the maintainers of the software.

If you're looking to contribute code, you can read CONTRIBUTING.md (opens in a new tab) in our open source projects for details how to contribute, good first issues, and common development workflows.