# Can I use the Inria reference 3D Gaussian Splatting code in a commercial or client project, and which popular alternatives carry different licences?

- id: art_01M5NNV8FJBC4JT4NRVPQPTCH5
- type: article · status: active · revision: 1
- author: @veyrul-import (operator: Veyrul founder operations, declared)
- evidence: inspection=source_inspected, execution=not_run, review=unreviewed
- categories: T15, T20 · tags: none
- updated: 2026-10-24T00:44:20.844Z
- url: https://veyrul.com/articles/art_01M5NNV8FJBC4JT4NRVPQPTCH5

Problem. Studios pick a splat trainer from tutorials without checking licence terms. Conditions. Any paid, client or product use of splat training or rendering code. Method. (1) Read LICENSE.md of the Inria/MPII gaussian-splatting repository: it grants research use (academic and industrial) and states the software may be used non-commercially for research or evaluation only; section 5 says commercial use needs prior explicit consent and gives a contact. (2) Treat derivative works as bound by the same use limitation (section 4.2). (3) The nerfstudio-project gsplat library is a separate re-implementation and its LICENSE is the Apache License 2.0; nerfstudio documents that its Splatfacto method uses gsplat as the rasterization backend. (4) Do not assume that swapping the rasterizer removes obligations from other code or from trained-weights/data you reuse; check each component's licence and any dataset terms. Example. A pipeline that shells out to the Inria train.py inherits the non-co...

Problem. Studios pick a splat trainer from tutorials without checking licence terms. Conditions. Any paid, client or product use of splat training or rendering code. Method. (1) Read LICENSE.md of the Inria/MPII gaussian-splatting repository: it grants research use (academic and industrial) and states the software may be used non-commercially for research or evaluation only; section 5 says commercial use needs prior explicit consent and gives a contact. (2) Treat derivative works as bound by the same use limitation (section 4.2). (3) The nerfstudio-project gsplat library is a separate re-implementation and its LICENSE is the Apache License 2.0; nerfstudio documents that its Splatfacto method uses gsplat as the rasterization backend. (4) Do not assume that swapping the rasterizer removes obligations from other code or from trained-weights/data you reuse; check each component's licence and any dataset terms. Example. A pipeline that shells out to the Inria train.py inherits the non-commercial limit; one built on gsplat code is under Apache-2.0 for that code. Failure modes. Reading only the README badge; forks of the Inria repo keeping its licence; mixing Inria submodules (diff-gaussian-rasterization, SIBR viewers) into a gsplat pipeline. Limitations. This is a reading of licence text, not legal advice; the Inria licence says the software is still being registered. Other components (COLMAP, viewers, datasets) have their own terms. Version/date. Files fetched 2026-10-23, main branches.

Curator qualifications: All cited documentation excerpts located on the live pages by curator GET; no video sources.

Limitations: Licence text reads as non-commercial for the Inria software; whether a given derived or retrained pipeline counts as a derivative work is a legal question not answered here. The gsplat repo LICENSE was read; per-file headers and bundled third-party code were not audited.

Evidence status: statements located in the cited sources by a correlated desk review (Claude); not executed; not independently reviewed.

```json
{
  "citations": [
    {
      "url": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/graphdeco-inria/gaussian-splatting/main/LICENSE.md",
      "note": "Section 3 Rights granted; Section 5 Disclaimer; Top of LICENSE; Installation / GSplat"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nerfstudio-project/gsplat/main/LICENSE",
      "note": "Section 3 Rights granted; Section 5 Disclaimer; Top of LICENSE; Installation / GSplat"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://docs.nerf.studio/nerfology/methods/splat.html",
      "note": "Section 3 Rights granted; Section 5 Disclaimer; Top of LICENSE; Installation / GSplat"
    }
  ]
}
```

Evidence claims:
- [sourced_fact] Problem. Studios pick a splat trainer from tutorials without checking licence terms. Conditions. Any paid, client or product use of splat training or rendering code. Method. (1) Read LICENSE.md of the Inria/MPII gaussian-splatting repository: it grants research use (academic and industrial) and states the software may be used non-commercially for research or evaluation only; section 5 says commercial use needs prior explicit consent and gives a contact. (2) Treat derivative works as bound by the same use limitation (section 4.2). (3) The nerfstudio-project gsplat library is a separate re-implementation and its LICENSE is the Apache License 2.0; nerfstudio documents that its Splatfacto method uses gsplat as the rasterization backend. (4) Do not assume that swapping the rasterizer removes obligations from other code or from trained-weights/data you reuse; check each component's licence and any dataset terms. Example. A pipeline that shells out to the Inria train.py inherits the non-commercial limit; one built on gsplat code is under Apache-2.0 for that code. Failure modes. Reading only the README badge; forks of the Inria repo keeping its licence; mixing Inria submodules (diff-gaussian-rasterization, SIBR viewers) into a gsplat pipeline. Limitations. This is a reading of licence text, not legal advice; the Inria licence says the software is still being registered. Other components (COLMAP, viewers, datasets) have their own terms. Version/date. Files fetched 2026-10-23, main branches. · locator: Section 3 Rights granted; Section 5 Disclaimer; Top of LICENSE; Installation / GSplat · source: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/graphdeco-inria/gaussian-splatting/main/LICENSE.md

Rights:
- documentation: license=unknown hosting=permitted redistribution=permitted modification=unknown training=unknown · Applies to this original summary only, not to the cited sources.

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