When Hyvä launched, it promised to fix everything merchants hated about Magento’s default Luma theme: heavy JS, slow Core Web Vitals, and a painful developer experience. Agencies and merchants were happy to pay for a faster, cleaner frontend.
But under the hood, there was always a big question:
Was Hyvä truly a “from scratch” frontend — or a commercial fork of Magento Open Source distributed under a restrictive license?
Now that Hyvä Theme has been relicensed as free and open source under OSL 3.0 + AFL 3.0, the answer matters less for the future and more as a lesson in how not to mix copyleft and proprietary licensing. 
This article walks through that journey.
Note: This is a technical and licensing opinion piece, not a legal judgment. No public court decision has declared Hyvä in violation of Magento’s license. The analysis here explains why many in the community perceived a grey zone, and how open-sourcing the theme addresses it.
- The Promise: “Built from Scratch” and Commercial Licensing
Hyvä marketed itself as a frontend “built from scratch” on top of Magento, with:
• A minimal, Tailwind-based CSS stack,
• Alpine.js replacing Magento’s heavy RequireJS/Knockout system,
• Dramatically improved performance scores. 
This frontend was sold under a proprietary license, with a four-figure one-time fee per project and strict usage terms. 
For many agencies, that seemed fair: pay once, get a faster Magento.
The problem only appears when you look at the actual code.
- The Reality: Massive Magento Code Reuse Under the Hood
Once Hyvä’s repositories became public, a detailed code review showed that large portions of the theme were: 
• Copied Magento core templates dropped into Magento_* module directories,
• Templates that were almost identical to Magento’s originals, with:
• extra inline JavaScript,
• small structural or markup tweaks, ViewModels and service classes largely mirroring Magento’s own logic.
In other words, Hyvä wasn’t just a lightweight set of overrides or a pure headless frontend. It looked very much like a fork / derivative work of Magento’s own frontend stack.
Architecturally, that led to a long list of technical problems you’ve already documented:
• Huge inline scripts in .phtml,
* Global state and REST calls inside templates,
• Hard-to-extend monolithic views,
• Fragile upgrade paths that require manual diffing against Magento core. 
But our focus here is licensing, not architecture.
3. Why This Clashed With OSL 3.0 in the Eyes of Many
Magento’s OSL 3.0 license allows:
• Copying and modifying core code,
• Selling products that include that code.
However, it demands that if you redistribute modified core files, you must:
• Keep Magento’s original license notices, and
• License the derivative under OSL 3.0 (or compatible terms), not a more restrictive proprietary license. 
So when critics saw:
• Magento templates copied into Hyvä’s theme,
• Magento attributions seemingly removed or replaced,
• The whole bundle sold under a commercial “Hyvä Software User License” with no source access,
it looked like a classic copyleft conflict.
Again, this doesn’t automatically mean a court would find actual infringement. But from a risk and compliance standpoint, it’s clear why people started asking:
• “Is it even safe for us, as merchants, to pay for this?”
• “If Adobe or another rights holder enforced OSL 3.0 strictly, what would happen?”
• “Why not just open-source the parts that are obviously derived from Magento?”
Those questions culminated in multiple public posts and discussions calling on Hyvä to open-source its Magento-derived code to respect OSL 3.0. 
4. The Turning Point: Hyvä Goes Open Source (OSL 3.0 + AFL 3.0)
In early November 2025, Hyvä announced that: 
• The Hyvä Theme core is now free and open source.
• The code is relicensed under OSL 3.0 + AFL 3.0 – the same licenses Magento uses.
• Supporting theme modules are also relicensed under OSL 3.0.
• The business model shifts to selling:
• Hyvä UI as a separate paid component,
• Hyvä Checkout, Enterprise, and Commerce as proprietary add-ons.
This change does three important things from a licensing perspective:
1. Aligns the theme code with Magento’s licensing model
Hyvä’s code that builds directly on Magento’s frontend stack now shares the same copyleft obligations.
2. Removes the closed-source barrier
Developers, auditors, and merchants can inspect the actual files, check attributions, and verify compliance themselves.
3. Lowers risk for new adopters
Anyone implementing Hyvä today is using a theme which, at least on paper, respects OSL 3.0’s copyleft requirements.
Whether this change was driven primarily by:
• long-term business strategy,
• community and ecosystem pressure,
• or a quiet recognition that the previous license posture was hard to justify,
is something only Hyvä’s leadership can answer. Official messaging emphasizes community and strategic growth. 
But from the outside, the effect is clear: the licensing grey zone around the theme core has largely been closed.
5. What Still Deserves Scrutiny
Even with the theme now open source, a few areas still deserve attention:
• Historical closed-source releases
Past distributions that may have contained Magento-derived code under a proprietary license don’t magically disappear. For most merchants, though, risk is low if they move to the current open-source base.
• Enterprise / paid products
Hyvä Commerce / Enterprise may also interact with or wrap Magento code. Ensuring that any Magento-derived parts in those products comply with their respective licenses will be important. 
• Attribution and headers
Now that the repository is public, it’s easier to spot where Magento code is reused, and whether Magento’s original notices are preserved as required by OSL 3.0.
The good news: because the theme is open, the community can help keep everyone honest.
6. Takeaways for Developers, Vendors, and Merchants
For frontend vendors and theme authors:
• If your product is effectively a fork of an open-source platform, you must treat licensing as a first-class architectural constraint.
• “Copy and paste core, close it, and sell it” is rarely compatible with copyleft licenses like OSL 3.0.
• Open-sourcing the parts that are clearly derivative often isn’t optional — it’s simply what the license demands.
For merchants and agencies:
• Don’t just look at performance benchmarks and marketing claims; ask:
• “What is this based on?”
• “What licenses apply?”
• “Is this code legally clean to use at scale?”
• Hyvä’s move to OSL 3.0 / AFL 3.0 is a net win: it reduces legal uncertainty, improves transparency, and gives you an audit-able codebase.
For the Magento ecosystem as a whole:
• This saga shows that community scrutiny works. Questions about license compliance, raised publicly and persistently, can push popular vendors toward more open and compliant models.
• At the same time, it’s a cautionary tale: if you build a closed product on top of copyleft code, you should expect people to notice — and eventually, you may have to open the doors anyway.
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