FathomOpen-source licenses
Fathom itself is released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0-or-later). Contact: buzznomore401@gmail.com.
Fathom is built on the work of many open-source projects. They are installed on your PC by the first-run setup from their official sources; each stays under its own license. The main ones are listed here (license names are as published by each project; check each project for the exact current terms).
| Component | Used for | License |
|---|---|---|
| PyMuPDF (MuPDF) | Reading and editing PDFs | AGPL-3.0 (or commercial from Artifex) |
| pdf2docx | PDF → Word | GPL-3.0 |
| FastAPI, Starlette, Uvicorn, Pydantic | The local engine | MIT / BSD |
| pywebview | The app window | BSD-3-Clause |
| Pillow, NumPy, OpenCV | Pictures | HPND, BSD-3-Clause, Apache-2.0 |
| RapidOCR, ONNX Runtime | Reading text in pictures | Apache-2.0, MIT |
| faster-whisper (CTranslate2), Whisper models | Speech to text | MIT |
| Transformers, PyTorch (optional) | Offline handwriting reader | Apache-2.0, BSD-3-Clause |
| ReportLab, pypdf, python-docx, python-pptx, openpyxl, Matplotlib | Making documents, slides, sheets, charts | BSD / MIT / PSF-style |
| FFmpeg (via imageio-ffmpeg) | Audio and video | LGPL/GPL (depends on the build) |
| LibreOffice, Calibre, Pandoc, 7-Zip | Office and e-book conversion, archives | MPL-2.0, GPL-3.0, GPL-2.0+, LGPL-2.1+ (installed separately; not part of Fathom's files) |
| pdf.js, pdf-lib, JSZip (in Fathom Online, shipped with the website) | Reading PDFs, editing PDFs and making zip files in your browser | Apache-2.0, MIT, MIT or GPL-3.0 (copies of the licenses are in online/vendor/) |
| Ollama | Runs the free local AI assistant (installed separately) | MIT |
| libtorrent | Torrent client | BSD-3-Clause |
| py7zr, pyzipper, cryptography, segno, send2trash and others | Archives, encryption, QR codes, Recycle Bin | LGPL / MIT / BSD / Apache |
Fathom itself uses PyMuPDF (AGPL) and pdf2docx (GPL). If you share Fathom with others, make sure the license you give Fathom's own code is compatible with those (the simplest compatible choice is AGPL-3.0, with the source code available to users), or replace those parts or buy a commercial license. This is not legal advice.