Sovereignty
No lock-in. In writing. That is why you can let us run it.
Your data, your models and your history are yours. You can export them on any day, in open formats, at no cost. Leaving Vela is free.
Everything on this page is in your contract.
Who we are in every model
Vela is context infrastructure in production. We build it, we run it for cities that ask us to, and we stand behind it under an SLA. Where your team runs it instead, we remain the vendor behind them.
How your system is operated day to day — your team, ours, or a mix — is defined in your contract and SLA. You always have someone to call.
What you own
- Your data
- Every entity, exportable as NGSI-LD (JSON-LD). Your full history, exportable as Parquet or CSV. Your open-data catalogue (DCAT-AP).
- Your models
- Your context files and data models. Smart Data Models are public by definition.
- Everything built for you
- Scripts, flows, dashboards, connectors, applications — whatever we build under your contract is yours, released under EUPL 1.2 in your own repository. You paid for it. It is yours and it is open.
- Your choice of broker
- Scorpio, Orion-LD or Stellio. All open source. Anyone can install them.
The export works on any day, not only at termination. Test it in month one. We encourage this.
Where your data lives
In Managed and Cloud Services, your data is hosted in the EU, in a region you choose, under your jurisdiction. Vela is the custodian, never the owner. Access is logged, exportable and yours to audit.
At the edge, data stays on your device or site and leaves only what you configure to leave.
What is ours
- Vela Tools, FOSS edition
- Core functions under EUPL 1.2. Free forever. Yours to run, change and keep, with or without us. A released FOSS feature never moves to Pro. Our FOSS editions live in the vela-context organisation on GitHub. CASSIOPEIA, our semantic mapping engine, is published there now; the remaining tools follow as they are released.
- Vela Tools, Pro edition
- Pro editions are what make Managed run at scale: clustering, single sign-on, audit trails, multi-tenancy, premium connectors. Developed at our expense, never yours. Licensed for the term of your contract. You know before signing exactly which components are Pro. Pro editions are licensed under your own procurement framework — EVB-IT in Germany, GIBIT 2025 or ARBIT in the Netherlands — with no deviations. Our two-page licence schedule fills in the module list, the term and your audit rights, and nothing else. Your legal team reviews two pages, not ours.
- Vela at the edge
- Vela runs on devices in homes, substations and sites, on SandBoxOS. Context is built where the data is created and only the result travels. Sovereignty starts at the socket, not in the cloud.
Vela Cloud Services
Vela Pulse, Vela Tide, Vela Transit, Vela Care and others are running services, not tools: they collect, hold and report on your data under a subscription. Every report and export you pull during the term is yours to keep. The service itself stays in the cloud, hosted in the EU under your jurisdiction, with Vela as custodian.
What you pay for is yours and open. What we fund is ours and licensed.
We never develop Pro features on your money. If you commission a feature, it is yours under EUPL 1.2 — and we tell you so before we start. This keeps your contract clean under GIBIT 2025, the Italian CAD, EVB-IT and the Interoperable Europe Act.
The IP annex
Every contract lists each deliverable under one of four tags:
- Yours
- Built for you, released under EUPL 1.2, yours on payment, forever.
- Open
- Vela Tools FOSS edition, EUPL 1.2, yours forever.
- Licensed
- Vela Tools Pro edition, licensed for the term under your framework.
- Third-party
- Brokers and other upstream components, you install from source.
Nothing is left untagged. Nothing is a surprise at the end.
Four ways to run Vela
Most cities choose Managed. Everything on this page — the export on any day, the IP annex, the honest list of what moves with you — is what makes that a safe choice, not a dependent one.
You choose how much you run yourself. You can move between models at any time, in either direction.
- Managed
- One contract. We deliver platform, operations and support under a single SLA.
- Hybrid
- Your infrastructure, our Pro tools. Your team runs day-to-day operations; we provide engineering escalation, security patches and upgrades under a defined SLA.
- Sovereign FOSS
- Your servers, FOSS editions, your jurisdiction, your team. Support contracts optional.
- Independent
- Everything in-house. We remain available for custom development on demand.
Leaving: the honest list
- What moves with you
- Everything under Yours and Open above, plus the public documentation.
- What you set up on the new target
- Ingestion mappings, gateway access policies, the wiring between broker and archive, day-two operations. Your team can do this with the public documentation. Many do.
- What stays behind
- Pro editions and Cloud Services. Access ends with the contract; the transition back to the FOSS edition is documented and free of charge. Everything you exported during the term stays yours.
- If you would rather not move alone
- We offer the migration as a fixed-scope, fixed-price service — server build, verified data migration, FOSS installation, handover runbook. Optional. Available at any time, including before you sign anything.
Support
Support is separate from operations. Operations is who runs the system. Support is who fixes the product.
- FOSS edition
- Public documentation, public issue tracker, release notes. No contract, no SLA. Community pace.
- Support contract
- Engineering escalation for the platform, security patches with a defined response time, tested upgrades, and help with mapping and model changes when your sources change. Business hours, defined response and resolution targets per severity. Available for every model, including Sovereign FOSS and Independent.
- SLA for operations
- Availability targets and 24/7 handling of critical incidents. Defined in the contract of the model you choose. In Managed, we hold it. In Hybrid and Sovereign FOSS, your team holds it, with our support contract behind it.
One rule: support never depends on lock-in. If you leave, the support contract can stay. If you stay, you can drop it. Either way the export works.
How Vela maps to public-sector frameworks
We list the requirement, what Vela does about it, and where the answer is partial. Your legal team decides compliance; this table gives them the facts.
| Framework | What it requires | How Vela meets it | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Interoperable Europe Act (EU 2024/903) | Interoperability assessments for binding requirements; open standards; EUPL as reference licence | Built on ETSI NGSI-LD; FOSS editions and all commissioned work under EUPL 1.2; Smart Data Models; DCAT-AP catalogue | Meets |
| GIBIT 2025 (Netherlands, VNG) | Custom software “open source unless”, published under EUPL; reversibility and exit clauses; standard software exempt | Everything built for you released under EUPL 1.2 on a public repository; Pro editions are standard software, licensed under GIBIT 2025 for the term; exit clause and IP annex in every contract | Meets |
| Common Ground (Netherlands, VNG) | Layered architecture, API-based access to registers, build once, use many times | Vela is the context and sensor layer next to Common Ground, not a replacement; NGSI-LD APIs expose real-time context to Common Ground applications | Complements |
| DIN SPEC 91357 (Germany, Open Urban Platform) | Reference architecture for open urban data platforms; open interfaces; no vendor lock-in | NGSI-LD context broker, historical archive and open APIs map to the OUP layers; NGSI is an accepted output format in DIN SPEC ecosystems | Meets |
| EVB-IT (Germany, public IT contract terms) | Standard contract terms for software licensing, cloud and custom development; reversibility | Pro editions licensed under EVB-IT Überlassung Typ B or EVB-IT Cloud with no deviations; commissioned code handed over under EUPL 1.2 | Meets |
| MPSC / OpenCoDE (Germany, federal Smart City funding) | All application code published on OpenCoDE, strong copyleft preferred | FOSS editions and all commissioned work under EUPL 1.2, publishable on OpenCoDE; Pro editions cannot be part of an MPSC-funded deliverable | FOSS edition only |
| CAD art. 68–69 (Italy) | Comparative evaluation with open source and reuse first; software owned by public administration released as open source | FOSS edition available for the comparative evaluation; everything built for you released open and publishable on Developers Italia; Pro requires the buyer’s justification under art. 68 | Meets, Pro with justification |
| ENI and Ley 40/2015 art. 157–158 (Spain) | National interoperability scheme; software reuse and transfer between administrations | NGSI-LD as ETSI standard; commissioned work under EUPL 1.2 is reusable by any administration | Meets |
| UNE 178104 (Spain, smart city platform) | Interoperability requirements for an integrated city platform | NGSI-based context management as referenced in the UNE family | Meets |
| RNID (Portugal) | Legally binding list of open standards for public administration | JSON-LD, CSV, Parquet and DCAT-AP exports; NGSI-LD is an ETSI standard; RNID listing verified per procurement | Meets on formats, verify listing |
| OSLO and LDES (Belgium, Flanders) | Mandatory OSLO data standards; smart-city data via Linked Data Event Streams | Mapping between NGSI-LD and OSLO vocabularies through our semantic mapping engine; native LDES publishing not included | Via mapping, partial |
| X-tee / Suomi.fi (Estonia, Finland) | Mandatory national data exchange layer between public information systems | Vela exposes NGSI-LD APIs that an X-Road security server can front; native X-Road integration is project work | Via integration, partial |
By country
Pick your country. You get the one answer you came for, the facts behind it, and a note you can attach to your file.
- Netherlands GIBIT 2025
- Germany DIN SPEC 91357, EVB-IT, MPSC
- Italy CAD art. 68–69
- Spain ENI, UNE 178104
- Portugal RNID
- Belgium (Flanders) OSLO, LDES
- Estonia X-tee
- Finland Suomi.fi
- Denmark KOMBIT, OS2
- France SILL, free software plan
- Slovenia tender sovereignty clauses
Your country is not listed. Every EU member state falls under the Interoperable Europe Act, and Vela meets it: ETSI NGSI-LD, EUPL 1.2, open exports, IP annex. National rules differ. Tell us your country and framework. We send you the mapping within five working days.
Request a country noteFrequently asked
- Is Vela open source?
- Vela Tools ship in two editions. The FOSS edition is under EUPL 1.2 and published in the vela-context organisation on GitHub. The Pro edition adds clustering, SSO, audit trails, multi-tenancy and premium connectors and is licensed for the contract term.
- Who owns what we commission?
- You do. Anything built under your contract is released under EUPL 1.2 in your own repository and listed as yours in the IP annex. Vela never develops Pro features on customer money.
- Can we export our data at any time?
- Yes. Every entity as NGSI-LD, full history as Parquet or CSV, catalogue as DCAT-AP, on any day, at no cost.
- Under which terms is the Pro edition licensed?
- Under the buyer’s own procurement framework: EVB-IT in Germany, GIBIT 2025 or ARBIT in the Netherlands, with no deviations. A two-page schedule lists the modules, the term and the audit rights.
- Does Vela meet GIBIT 2025?
- Commissioned software is released under EUPL 1.2 on a public repository, Pro editions are standard software licensed under GIBIT 2025 for the term, and the exit clause and IP annex are in every contract. The buyer’s legal team confirms compliance for its case.
- Can Vela be used in a German MPSC-funded project?
- Yes, with the FOSS edition and commissioned work under EUPL 1.2, publishable on OpenCoDE. Pro editions cannot be part of an MPSC-funded deliverable.
- Which context brokers does Vela support?
- Scorpio, Orion-LD and Stellio. All open source. The buyer chooses.
- Who operates the system?
- In Managed, Vela runs the platform under an SLA. In Hybrid and Sovereign FOSS, the buyer’s team runs it with Vela as the vendor behind them. The buyer always has someone to call.
- Where is our data hosted?
- In Managed and Cloud Services, in the EU, in a region the buyer chooses, under the buyer’s jurisdiction. Vela is the custodian, never the owner. At the edge, data stays on the buyer’s device or site.
- What happens if we leave?
- Everything tagged Yours and Open moves with the buyer. Pro editions and Cloud Services end with the contract. Exports made during the term stay the buyer’s. Migration is available as a fixed-price service, or the buyer’s team does it with the public documentation.
For procurement
EU public-sector frameworks require exit and reversibility. GIBIT 2025 (NL) scores it and requires custom software to be open source under EUPL. The Italian CAD requires a comparative evaluation with open source first. EVB-IT (DE) scores reversibility. The Interoperable Europe Act makes interoperability assessments mandatory.
This page is our standing answer. Every claim on it is in the contract, including the IP annex. Attach this page to your evaluation file.
Questions about reversibility, the export clause or the IP annex?
Talk to usFramework mapping reviewed: September 2026.
Sovereignty
No lock-in. In writing. That is why you can let us run it.
Your data, your models and your history are yours. You can export them on any day, in open formats, at no cost. Leaving Vela is free.
Everything on this page is in your contract.
Who we are in every model
Vela is context infrastructure in production. We build it, we run it for cities that ask us to, and we stand behind it under an SLA. Where your team runs it instead, we remain the vendor behind them.
How your system is operated day to day — your team, ours, or a mix — is defined in your contract and SLA. You always have someone to call.
What you own
- Your data
- Every entity, exportable as NGSI-LD (JSON-LD). Your full history, exportable as Parquet or CSV. Your open-data catalogue (DCAT-AP).
- Your models
- Your context files and data models. Smart Data Models are public by definition.
- Everything built for you
- Scripts, flows, dashboards, connectors, applications — whatever we build under your contract is yours, released under EUPL 1.2 in your own repository. You paid for it. It is yours and it is open.
- Your choice of broker
- Scorpio, Orion-LD or Stellio. All open source. Anyone can install them.
The export works on any day, not only at termination. Test it in month one. We encourage this.
Where your data lives
In Managed and Cloud Services, your data is hosted in the EU, in a region you choose, under your jurisdiction. Vela is the custodian, never the owner. Access is logged, exportable and yours to audit.
At the edge, data stays on your device or site and leaves only what you configure to leave.
What is ours
- Vela Tools, FOSS edition
- Core functions under EUPL 1.2. Free forever. Yours to run, change and keep, with or without us. A released FOSS feature never moves to Pro. Our FOSS editions live in the vela-context organisation on GitHub. CASSIOPEIA, our semantic mapping engine, is published there now; the remaining tools follow as they are released.
- Vela Tools, Pro edition
- Pro editions are what make Managed run at scale: clustering, single sign-on, audit trails, multi-tenancy, premium connectors. Developed at our expense, never yours. Licensed for the term of your contract. You know before signing exactly which components are Pro. Pro editions are licensed under your own procurement framework — EVB-IT in Germany, GIBIT 2025 or ARBIT in the Netherlands — with no deviations. Our two-page licence schedule fills in the module list, the term and your audit rights, and nothing else. Your legal team reviews two pages, not ours.
- Vela at the edge
- Vela runs on devices in homes, substations and sites, on SandBoxOS. Context is built where the data is created and only the result travels. Sovereignty starts at the socket, not in the cloud.
Vela Cloud Services
Vela Pulse, Vela Tide, Vela Transit, Vela Care and others are running services, not tools: they collect, hold and report on your data under a subscription. Every report and export you pull during the term is yours to keep. The service itself stays in the cloud, hosted in the EU under your jurisdiction, with Vela as custodian.
What you pay for is yours and open. What we fund is ours and licensed.
We never develop Pro features on your money. If you commission a feature, it is yours under EUPL 1.2 — and we tell you so before we start. This keeps your contract clean under GIBIT 2025, the Italian CAD, EVB-IT and the Interoperable Europe Act.
The IP annex
Every contract lists each deliverable under one of four tags:
- Yours
- Built for you, released under EUPL 1.2, yours on payment, forever.
- Open
- Vela Tools FOSS edition, EUPL 1.2, yours forever.
- Licensed
- Vela Tools Pro edition, licensed for the term under your framework.
- Third-party
- Brokers and other upstream components, you install from source.
Nothing is left untagged. Nothing is a surprise at the end.
Four ways to run Vela
Most cities choose Managed. Everything on this page — the export on any day, the IP annex, the honest list of what moves with you — is what makes that a safe choice, not a dependent one.
You choose how much you run yourself. You can move between models at any time, in either direction.
- Managed
- One contract. We deliver platform, operations and support under a single SLA.
- Hybrid
- Your infrastructure, our Pro tools. Your team runs day-to-day operations; we provide engineering escalation, security patches and upgrades under a defined SLA.
- Sovereign FOSS
- Your servers, FOSS editions, your jurisdiction, your team. Support contracts optional.
- Independent
- Everything in-house. We remain available for custom development on demand.
Leaving: the honest list
- What moves with you
- Everything under Yours and Open above, plus the public documentation.
- What you set up on the new target
- Ingestion mappings, gateway access policies, the wiring between broker and archive, day-two operations. Your team can do this with the public documentation. Many do.
- What stays behind
- Pro editions and Cloud Services. Access ends with the contract; the transition back to the FOSS edition is documented and free of charge. Everything you exported during the term stays yours.
- If you would rather not move alone
- We offer the migration as a fixed-scope, fixed-price service — server build, verified data migration, FOSS installation, handover runbook. Optional. Available at any time, including before you sign anything.
Support
Support is separate from operations. Operations is who runs the system. Support is who fixes the product.
- FOSS edition
- Public documentation, public issue tracker, release notes. No contract, no SLA. Community pace.
- Support contract
- Engineering escalation for the platform, security patches with a defined response time, tested upgrades, and help with mapping and model changes when your sources change. Business hours, defined response and resolution targets per severity. Available for every model, including Sovereign FOSS and Independent.
- SLA for operations
- Availability targets and 24/7 handling of critical incidents. Defined in the contract of the model you choose. In Managed, we hold it. In Hybrid and Sovereign FOSS, your team holds it, with our support contract behind it.
One rule: support never depends on lock-in. If you leave, the support contract can stay. If you stay, you can drop it. Either way the export works.
How Vela maps to public-sector frameworks
We list the requirement, what Vela does about it, and where the answer is partial. Your legal team decides compliance; this table gives them the facts.
| Framework | What it requires | How Vela meets it | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Interoperable Europe Act (EU 2024/903) | Interoperability assessments for binding requirements; open standards; EUPL as reference licence | Built on ETSI NGSI-LD; FOSS editions and all commissioned work under EUPL 1.2; Smart Data Models; DCAT-AP catalogue | Meets |
| GIBIT 2025 (Netherlands, VNG) | Custom software “open source unless”, published under EUPL; reversibility and exit clauses; standard software exempt | Everything built for you released under EUPL 1.2 on a public repository; Pro editions are standard software, licensed under GIBIT 2025 for the term; exit clause and IP annex in every contract | Meets |
| Common Ground (Netherlands, VNG) | Layered architecture, API-based access to registers, build once, use many times | Vela is the context and sensor layer next to Common Ground, not a replacement; NGSI-LD APIs expose real-time context to Common Ground applications | Complements |
| DIN SPEC 91357 (Germany, Open Urban Platform) | Reference architecture for open urban data platforms; open interfaces; no vendor lock-in | NGSI-LD context broker, historical archive and open APIs map to the OUP layers; NGSI is an accepted output format in DIN SPEC ecosystems | Meets |
| EVB-IT (Germany, public IT contract terms) | Standard contract terms for software licensing, cloud and custom development; reversibility | Pro editions licensed under EVB-IT Überlassung Typ B or EVB-IT Cloud with no deviations; commissioned code handed over under EUPL 1.2 | Meets |
| MPSC / OpenCoDE (Germany, federal Smart City funding) | All application code published on OpenCoDE, strong copyleft preferred | FOSS editions and all commissioned work under EUPL 1.2, publishable on OpenCoDE; Pro editions cannot be part of an MPSC-funded deliverable | FOSS edition only |
| CAD art. 68–69 (Italy) | Comparative evaluation with open source and reuse first; software owned by public administration released as open source | FOSS edition available for the comparative evaluation; everything built for you released open and publishable on Developers Italia; Pro requires the buyer’s justification under art. 68 | Meets, Pro with justification |
| ENI and Ley 40/2015 art. 157–158 (Spain) | National interoperability scheme; software reuse and transfer between administrations | NGSI-LD as ETSI standard; commissioned work under EUPL 1.2 is reusable by any administration | Meets |
| UNE 178104 (Spain, smart city platform) | Interoperability requirements for an integrated city platform | NGSI-based context management as referenced in the UNE family | Meets |
| RNID (Portugal) | Legally binding list of open standards for public administration | JSON-LD, CSV, Parquet and DCAT-AP exports; NGSI-LD is an ETSI standard; RNID listing verified per procurement | Meets on formats, verify listing |
| OSLO and LDES (Belgium, Flanders) | Mandatory OSLO data standards; smart-city data via Linked Data Event Streams | Mapping between NGSI-LD and OSLO vocabularies through our semantic mapping engine; native LDES publishing not included | Via mapping, partial |
| X-tee / Suomi.fi (Estonia, Finland) | Mandatory national data exchange layer between public information systems | Vela exposes NGSI-LD APIs that an X-Road security server can front; native X-Road integration is project work | Via integration, partial |
By country
Pick your country. You get the one answer you came for, the facts behind it, and a note you can attach to your file.
- Netherlands GIBIT 2025
- Germany DIN SPEC 91357, EVB-IT, MPSC
- Italy CAD art. 68–69
- Spain ENI, UNE 178104
- Portugal RNID
- Belgium (Flanders) OSLO, LDES
- Estonia X-tee
- Finland Suomi.fi
- Denmark KOMBIT, OS2
- France SILL, free software plan
- Slovenia tender sovereignty clauses
Your country is not listed. Every EU member state falls under the Interoperable Europe Act, and Vela meets it: ETSI NGSI-LD, EUPL 1.2, open exports, IP annex. National rules differ. Tell us your country and framework. We send you the mapping within five working days.
Request a country noteFrequently asked
- Is Vela open source?
- Vela Tools ship in two editions. The FOSS edition is under EUPL 1.2 and published in the vela-context organisation on GitHub. The Pro edition adds clustering, SSO, audit trails, multi-tenancy and premium connectors and is licensed for the contract term.
- Who owns what we commission?
- You do. Anything built under your contract is released under EUPL 1.2 in your own repository and listed as yours in the IP annex. Vela never develops Pro features on customer money.
- Can we export our data at any time?
- Yes. Every entity as NGSI-LD, full history as Parquet or CSV, catalogue as DCAT-AP, on any day, at no cost.
- Under which terms is the Pro edition licensed?
- Under the buyer’s own procurement framework: EVB-IT in Germany, GIBIT 2025 or ARBIT in the Netherlands, with no deviations. A two-page schedule lists the modules, the term and the audit rights.
- Does Vela meet GIBIT 2025?
- Commissioned software is released under EUPL 1.2 on a public repository, Pro editions are standard software licensed under GIBIT 2025 for the term, and the exit clause and IP annex are in every contract. The buyer’s legal team confirms compliance for its case.
- Can Vela be used in a German MPSC-funded project?
- Yes, with the FOSS edition and commissioned work under EUPL 1.2, publishable on OpenCoDE. Pro editions cannot be part of an MPSC-funded deliverable.
- Which context brokers does Vela support?
- Scorpio, Orion-LD and Stellio. All open source. The buyer chooses.
- Who operates the system?
- In Managed, Vela runs the platform under an SLA. In Hybrid and Sovereign FOSS, the buyer’s team runs it with Vela as the vendor behind them. The buyer always has someone to call.
- Where is our data hosted?
- In Managed and Cloud Services, in the EU, in a region the buyer chooses, under the buyer’s jurisdiction. Vela is the custodian, never the owner. At the edge, data stays on the buyer’s device or site.
- What happens if we leave?
- Everything tagged Yours and Open moves with the buyer. Pro editions and Cloud Services end with the contract. Exports made during the term stay the buyer’s. Migration is available as a fixed-price service, or the buyer’s team does it with the public documentation.
For procurement
EU public-sector frameworks require exit and reversibility. GIBIT 2025 (NL) scores it and requires custom software to be open source under EUPL. The Italian CAD requires a comparative evaluation with open source first. EVB-IT (DE) scores reversibility. The Interoperable Europe Act makes interoperability assessments mandatory.
This page is our standing answer. Every claim on it is in the contract, including the IP annex. Attach this page to your evaluation file.
Questions about reversibility, the export clause or the IP annex?
Talk to usFramework mapping reviewed: September 2026.