--- title: Some Ardalis Packages Are Going Commercial: What You... description: Three Ardalis NuGet packages, GuardClauses, SmartEnum and Specification, are moving to commercial licensing in late 2026 or early 2027, distributed through... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/some-ardalis-packages-are-going-commercial-what-you-need-to-know-zuuynzglg twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Some Ardalis Packages Are Going Commercial: What You Need to Know | daily.dev og:description: Three Ardalis NuGet packages, GuardClauses, SmartEnum and Specification, are moving to commercial licensing in late 2026 or early 2027, distributed through... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/some-ardalis-packages-are-going-commercial-what-you-need-to-know-zuuynzglg og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/zUuynZglG.png og:image:alt: Some Ardalis Packages Are Going Commercial: What You Need to Know og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Some Ardalis Packages Are Going Commercial: What You Need to Know **[Ardalis](https://daily.dev/sources/ardalis)** · 16 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Three Ardalis NuGet packages, GuardClauses, SmartEnum and Specification, are moving to commercial licensing in late 2026 or early 2027, distributed through NimbleTools. Individual developers, students, open source projects, and companies or non-profits under $5 million in revenue or budget get a free community license. Larger organizations will need to buy a license to get new versions, though current versions stay free and one more free release is promised in 2026. Ardalis.Result stays free and open source. There are no runtime checks, but a compile-time warning will flag a missing license. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Will I have to pay to keep using Ardalis.GuardClauses or Ardalis.SmartEnum? Most users will not have to pay. Individual developers, students, hobbyists, open source projects, and companies or non-profits under $5 million in annual revenue or budget (and under $10 million in outside capital raised) get a free community license for the commercial versions. Larger organizations will need to buy a license starting no earlier than mid-December 2026 to get new versions, though existing versions and one more free 2026 release remain free forever. _daily.dev helps .NET developers track licensing changes like this before they hit a build pipeline._ ### Is Ardalis.Result also becoming a paid package? No, Ardalis.Result will remain free and open source under its existing MIT license, unlike GuardClauses, SmartEnum, and Specification, which are moving to a commercial suite distributed by a new company called NimbleTools. Only those three packages and their related sub-packages are part of the upcoming licensing change. _developers weighing which .NET libraries to keep or swap can follow changes like this on daily.dev._ ### How will a compile-time license check work for a commercial NuGet package without a license key? At compile time, if no valid license key is found, the build shows a compiler warning indicating the license is missing and explaining how to obtain one. There are no runtime checks or phone-home behavior; licenses work offline and in CI or build agent scenarios, and individual warnings can be suppressed if a team chooses to. _teams evaluating build-time license enforcement can keep up with real-world approaches like this on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Stop Your AI Agent Picking the Wrong .NET Libraries](https://daily.dev/posts/stop-your-ai-agent-picking-the-wrong-net-libraries-m6tagi9al) · Code with Mukesh · 3 upvotes · 0 comments - [Why Are .NET Libraries Going Paid? The Open Source Cost AI Can’t Erase](https://daily.dev/posts/why-are-net-libraries-going-paid-the-open-source-cost-ai-can-t-erase-bnptxyznc) · We Are .NET · 8 upvotes · 0 comments - [Six Labors : Security Support and License Enforcement](https://daily.dev/posts/six-labors-security-support-and-license-enforcement-xf9cl8fn2) · Six Labors : ImageSharp · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [I changed my license to EUPL](https://daily.dev/posts/i-changed-my-license-to-eupl-e05ojnm7q) · Lobsters · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#open-source](https://daily.dev/tags/open-source), [#.net](https://daily.dev/tags/.net), [#licensing](https://daily.dev/tags/licensing), [#nuget](https://daily.dev/tags/nuget) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/some-ardalis-packages-are-going-commercial-what-you-need-to-know-zuuynzglg) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Some Ardalis Packages Are Going Commercial: What You Need to Know","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/some-ardalis-packages-are-going-commercial-what-you-need-to-know-zuuynzglg","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/some-ardalis-packages-are-going-commercial-what-you-need-to-know-zuuynzglg"},"datePublished":"2026-10-29T13:55:27.212Z","dateModified":"2026-10-29T13:56:13.715Z","description":"Three Ardalis NuGet packages, GuardClauses, SmartEnum and Specification, are moving to commercial licensing in late 2026 or early 2027, distributed through...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/21d244d4c3bc0d59b75e018a30200ba8?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/21d244d4c3bc0d59b75e018a30200ba8?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Ardalis","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Ardalis","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/9a81f88e482047f68adc1d0ef677ec9b","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/ardalis"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/some-ardalis-packages-are-going-commercial-what-you-need-to-know-zuuynzglg","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"open-source,.net,licensing,nuget","timeRequired":"PT16M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Ardalis","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/ardalis"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Some Ardalis Packages Are Going Commercial: What You Need to Know"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/some-ardalis-packages-are-going-commercial-what-you-need-to-know-zuuynzglg#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Will I have to pay to keep using Ardalis.GuardClauses or Ardalis.SmartEnum?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Most users will not have to pay. 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