Anaconda Commercial Edition FAQ

Please note that since the publication of this post, we’ve repositioned our product offerings into Anaconda plans. Individual Edition is now reflected by our Free plan, Commercial Edition is now reflected by our Pro plan, Team Edition is now reflected by our Business plan, and Enterprise Edition is now reflected by our Enterprise plan. Click here to learn more about our plans for individuals, and click here to learn more about our plans for organizations.

We built our open-source product, Anaconda Individual Edition (aka Anaconda Distribution), with the intention of supporting individual open-source practitioners and researchers. Back in 2012, we didn’t know that what we were building would end up being used by tens of thousands of commercial organizations as machine learning and AI became increasingly critical to competitive advantage.

Today more than 20 million practitioners use Anaconda in settings ranging from small research institutions to academia to Fortune 100 companies. Commercial usage of our packages has increased more than 700% since 2016. Anaconda has become essential technology in a wide variety of settings, but our public repositories were not created to support such scale of production workflows. There are no uptime guarantees or SLAs. And, outside of community forums, there isn’t a scalable way for us to handle package support or update requests for so many users.

Moreover, as open-source software has become a foundational element of the tech stack used in every industry — in the data science and machine learning space as in so many others — it is time for the commercial users to help fund the open-source innovation they depend on.

I’m pleased to officially announce a new addition to Anaconda’s product line — Anaconda Commercial Edition! Commercial Edition brings the open-source packages that commercial users have come to depend on from Anaconda into an offering that is suitable for production use.

Today Commercial Edition provides our commercial users with the innovation, compliance, and confidence they require. Key features include:

• More than 7,500 Anaconda-built data science/machine learning packages
• Access to all Anaconda packages curated for security and compatibility
• Right to use mirroring software to create copies of our commercial package repository (site license only)
• Guaranteed up-time to support commercial usage
• Compliance for commercial use according to the Anaconda Terms of Service

There is more to come on the roadmap, as we continue to build Commercial Edition to meet the needs of production users. And while there will always be a free version of Anaconda for individual hobbyists, academics, non-profits, and small businesses, Commercial Edition also provides an avenue for commercial users to support open-source projects and education through the Anaconda Dividend program.

As we’ve rolled out Anaconda Commercial Edition over the past few months, we’ve received a lot of questions from our users. I hope this FAQ will serve as a guide to help you understand the changes and how to move forward.

Why did you change your Terms of Service?

As a response to the dramatic increase in usage and adoption of Python and Anaconda among commercial users over the last few years, we updated our Terms of Service. Moving forward, we are asking commercial users who rely on our packaging & distribution efforts to purchase one of our commercial offerings.

How do you define commercial usage?

We clarified our definition of commercial usage in our Terms of Service in an update on Sept. 30, 2020. The new language states that use by individual hobbyists, students, universities, non-profit organizations, or businesses with less than 200 employees is allowed, and all other usage is considered commercial and thus requires a business relationship with Anaconda.

How do I know if I’m not in compliance?

You’re not in compliance with our Terms of Service if you are using Anaconda’s repositories in a for-profit or government organization with over 200 employees outside of a business relationship with Anaconda. You are also not in compliance if you are using mirroring software to create copies of the Anaconda repositories without a license.

How is Commercial Edition different from Individual Edition?

On the client side, Commercial Edition will look very similar to Individual Edition, in that it still includes Conda and our Navigator installers; however, users will access a new commercial repository versus our public repositories. We will be making updates to the Commercial Edition repository that are designed to support production and commercial use and will be distinct from updates we make to the public repositories.

Today the biggest differences are that Commercial Edition:

• Provides users with access to our SLA-backed commercial repository to support production workflows
• Provides the right to mirror our commercial repository (site licenses only)
• Offers support and services packages (site licenses only)
• Brings users into compliance with Anaconda’s Terms of Service

How can I buy Commercial Edition?

You can buy two ways. Commercial Edition is available as a single-user license subscription per month or per year. You can also purchase an enterprise license through our sales team.

What do I get with Commercial Edition?

Commercial Edition includes a security token to access and download Anaconda-curated packages and installers from our commercial repository. With a site license, Commercial Edition also includes the right to mirror the commercial repository. Commercial Edition also brings you into compliance with Anaconda’s Terms of Service for the duration of your subscription.

How is Anaconda sustaining the open-source community?

For almost a decade now, Anaconda has invested millions of dollars every year into open-source innovation and maintenance of projects such as Pandas, Dask, Numba, Bokeh, HoloViews, Panel, and Intake. Now, in addition, a portion of every sale of Commercial Edition will directly fund those and many other open-source projects and education through the Anaconda Dividend program.

I access Anaconda Individual Edition via another program (JFrog Artifactory, Sonatype, Nexus, Cloudera ML, etc.), do I need a paid license?

Yes. We are engaging with a wide variety of partners in the ecosystem to include licensure in their product offerings, but unless your vendor specifically states that a license for Anaconda is included in your purchase, you should buy a license from us.

I’m already an Anaconda customer. Do I need to purchase a Commercial Edition license as well?

Organizations who have an existing site wide license of Team Edition or Enterprise Edition will not have to purchase Commercial Edition as well unless the License only covers a set amount of users or departments. Compliance with our Terms of Service is covered by a site wide license for Team Edition or Enterprise Edition purchased directly through Anaconda or a partner company.

What happens if I continue to use Anaconda Individual Edition in a commercial setting without a paid license?

Per the Terms of Service that you agreed to upon usage of the repositories, we reserve the right to reduce bandwidth availability or terminate your right to use the Repository. You may experience performance degradation or complete disruption of package access.