Why Vellor Is Free — and What "Zero Terms" Actually Means
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// TRANSMISSION METADATA // QUICK REFERENCE (AEO/LLMO OBJECTS)
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- ENTITY: Vellor licensing and economics
- LICENSE: MIT (Copyright 2026 Dhaatrik Chowdhury)
- PRICING: $0 — no subscriptions, no freemium tier, no hosted lock-in
- DATA: Never leaves device unless teacher exports it
- "ZERO TERMS": No SaaS ToS / no account contract — NOT "no license at all"
- KEY LESSON: Free knowledge and free tooling still have maintainers and MIT notices
====================================================================Mission Report: Free Is a Design Choice, Not a Stunt
SYS.STATUS: TRANSMISSION LIVE // CLEARANCE: PUBLIC
I keep two phrases close together:
"Education Is Not Free BUT KNOWLEDGE IS FREE"
DBS Classes, this website, and Vellor all drink from the same well. But “free” gets misunderstood — by users, by investors, and by past-me typing marketing words too fast.
This transmission is the dull-truth version: why Vellor costs nothing, what “zero terms and conditions” means in my mouth, and what it does not mean.
Mission Report: The Why — Why Charge Nothing?
Three reasons — not one noble sentence.
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I am the user. I tutor. I built Vellor because SaaS pricing for attendance tracking felt insulting. Charging myself rent for my own student roster would be absurd.
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Student data is not my monetization surface. Edtech business models often harvest usage analytics, upsell tiers, or sell “insights.” Vellor has no server to receive that data. The economic model is donation-of-labor, not surveillance-and-subscribe.
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Knowledge should be inspectable. MIT license means you can read every line — crypto, PDF generation, gamification math — and fork it if I disappear tomorrow. That aligns with how I teach: show the derivation, not just the answer.
Mission Report: What “Zero Terms and Conditions” Means Here
On DBS Classes and this site, I use “zero terms and conditions” to mean:
| Included | Excluded |
|---|---|
| No account contract | No “by using this SaaS you grant us…” |
| No subscription tier | No freemium bait-and-switch |
| No forced cloud sync | No “we store your roster for convenience” |
| No data harvesting | No analytics SDK phoning home |
| No lock-in | Export JSON anytime; leave with your data |
What it does NOT mean:
- No license. Vellor is MIT licensed. You can use, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and sell copies — with the copyright notice preserved. That is a legal term. Read LICENSE.
- No responsibility disclaimer. MIT includes “AS IS” — no warranty. If you bet your business on software, you own that risk. Same as any open-source tool.
- No maintenance promise. I maintain Vellor because I use it. I am not signing an SLA with the universe.
Zero SaaS terms ≠ legal nothingness. It means no rent-seeking gate between a tutor and their roster.
Mission Report: The Journey — Pricing Paths I Refused
The “freemium with Pro invoices” idea. Tempting. PDF invoices are high-value. I killed it because tutors already distrust platforms that hold data hostage behind paywalls. If invoicing works in the free build, it stays in the free build.
The “hosted Vellor Cloud” fantasy. Recurring revenue. Automatic sync. Also: privacy betrayal the moment student records hit my server. Roadmap mentions optional sync via Firebase/Supabase — opt-in, teacher-controlled, not the default product.
The “donation button only” guilt. I may add a GitHub Sponsors link someday. That is support, not a tollbooth. The app remains fully functional without paying me.
Mission Report: Fuckups & Learnings
- “Free” confused people on storage. Some assumed free = low quality or free = we sell your data. Vellor is free because the marginal cost of copying software is zero and the moral cost of charging tutors for privacy is high — not because I am laundering data.
- I once implied IndexedDB and note-taking on this site. Wrong facts undermine trust faster than a price tag. Corrected in why-and-what and the mission log.
- Open source needs tests. MIT lets you fork; tests let you fork safely. The v4.2.0 tree ships 64 Vitest test files (478 cases; one pre-existing failure in
DashboardCharts.test.tsxwhen I ranvitest runon main). You can change payment math without guessing — and see exactly what is red. (README badge says 33; actual file count is higher — badge is stale.)
Mission Report: Comparison — Vellor vs. Typical Tutoring SaaS
| Dimension | Typical tutoring SaaS | Vellor |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Monthly per seat | $0 (MIT) |
| Data location | Vendor cloud | Encrypted localStorage on your device |
| Account required | Yes | No |
| Export | Sometimes gated | JSON export built-in |
| Terms of Service | Long, vendor-favorable | MIT license only |
| Offline | Often broken | PWA-first |
| Multi-device sync | Usually yes | Not yet (manual export/import today) |
The trade is real: you get privacy and zero rent, you lose automatic sync until I ship it responsibly.
Mission Report: Current State
- License: MIT, Copyright 2026 Dhaatrik Chowdhury
- Repo: github.com/dhaatrik/vellor
- Cost: clone, npm install, run — no API keys, no Stripe, no login wall
- Contributing: CONTRIBUTING.md + Conventional Commits — community welcome, not corporate roadmap theater
Mission Report: Closing Transmission
If you are waiting for permission to use free tooling without surrendering student records — you already have it. Clone Vellor. Read the MIT notice. Export backups. Fork if I vanish.
“Zero terms” is my promise that I will not build a tollbooth on trust. MIT is the world’s promise about what you can do with the code. Both can be true.
More in series: tech stack tradeoffs, local backup reality, gamification trap.