jekcms is commercially licensed software. There is no separately-licensed open-source router, database layer, or template-tag package — the whole codebase ships under the same commercial license. A small number of genuine third-party components, bundled under their own licenses, are the exception.
Every file in the jekcms codebase carries the same header: jekcms CMS — Commercial Software, Copyright (c) 2026 ALFA Dizayn Web Tasarım ve Yazılım. All rights reserved. That includes the routing layer, the database access layer, and the template functions theme developers use every day. There is no github.com/jekcms/router, no github.com/jekcms/database, no github.com/jekcms/template-tags — those repositories don't exist, and no part of jekcms has ever been published under the MIT license. If you're evaluating jekcms and were told otherwise, that information was wrong.
What Actually Ships Under an Open-Source License
Two genuine third-party components live inside jekcms, and both keep their original license intact because that's what their licenses require:
- Tiptap v2 (MIT license) — the rich-text editing engine behind the post editor. jekcms bundles it as
tiptap-bundle.jsand wraps it in its ownjek-editor.js, which adds image selection/resizing/alignment, figure/figcaption support, and jekcms-specific toolbar behaviour on top. - tFPDF 1.33 (LGPL, based on FPDF) — the PDF generation engine used for invoices, bundled with DejaVu Sans fonts for full Unicode and Turkish character support.
Their license notices are preserved at the top of the respective files, as required. Neither license extends to any other part of the product — they cover exactly the editor bundle and the PDF library, nothing else.
The Template Function Library: Real, but Not a Separate Package
What theme developers actually work with is a set of PHP helper functions available inside every theme's template files: get_posts(array $args = []), get_categories(), get_setting($group, $key, $default = null), site_url($path = ''), and a per-theme get_partial($name), among others. These functions are documented for theme authors and kept stable within a major version — but they live inside the same commercial codebase as everything else. There is no standalone "template tags" package you can install separately or reuse outside a licensed jekcms installation.
// A typical theme template, using the real helper functions
$posts = get_posts(['status' => 'published', 'limit' => 10]);
foreach ($posts as $post) {
echo get_partial('post-card', ['post' => $post]);
}
echo site_url('/category/' . $category['slug']);What's Proprietary, and Why That's the Whole Point
The honest answer is: everything except the two bundled libraries above. The admin panel, the router, the database layer, the template functions, the plugin system, the update mechanism — all of it ships under the commercial license included with your purchase. That's a deliberate choice, not an oversight. jekcms is sold as a complete, finished product, not assembled from a stack of separately-licensed open-source pieces with a proprietary shell wrapped around them.
What a license actually gets you: the readable, unminified PHP source for your own installation(s), the ability to modify it for your own sites, and product updates for as long as you're within your support/update terms. What it doesn't get you: the right to redistribute the codebase, strip the branding and resell it, or publish it as your own open-source project.
If You Need the Exact License Terms
This post covers the practical reality of what's open and what isn't — for the exact legal terms that apply to your purchase, read the license document that ships with your jekcms installation. If you specifically need to know what Tiptap or tFPDF permit for your own use outside of jekcms, check their upstream license files directly; jekcms doesn't modify what those licenses allow.
