Ply's 128 free Angular + Tailwind components are now MIT on GitHub

Ply — ply-ui.com — published its 128 free Angular + Tailwind components, the CLI, and the MCP server as MIT source on GitHub. Pro stays a paid license. You can read, use, modify, and redistribute the free tier, including in commercial products. The source is at github.com/ply-ui-ng/ply.

That is the whole claim. The rest of this post is what it changes, what it does not, and how to get the files.

What “open source” meant here, and what it means now

The Open Source Initiative’s definition is the one that matters: “Generally, Open Source software is software that can be freely accessed, used, changed, and shared (in modified or unmodified form) by anyone” (OSI FAQ). A custom “you may look, you may not redistribute” file is not that. For a while the free tier sat behind a no-redistribute license while the site still said open source. That was the wrong combination. We fixed the license and put the source where people already look for Angular libraries.

The MIT License is the text on the public repo. GitHub’s Choose a License summary is the short version teams actually quote: “A short and simple permissive license with conditions only requiring preservation of copyright and license notices.” Keep the copyright and permission notices. Use the code in a product you sell. Fork it. We are not asking for a copyleft obligation on your app.

This is not MUI Base UI (React). Ply is the Angular + Tailwind library at ply-ui.com, formerly published as Base UI (Angular).

What is MIT, and what stays Pro

The catalog is 218 items: 128 MIT, 90 Pro. CLI and MCP are MIT too. The paid line is the same as before — pre-composed screens and a handful of heavy widgets — not a crippled button.

Free files the CLI writes carry no license header. Pro files keep a header that points at LICENSE-PRO.md. License checks happen at download time only. Copied source has no telemetry and no phone-home.

If you already installed free components before the header came off, npx ply-ui-cli update may show a header-only diff. That is expected. Take upstream on those files, or skip them — the component did not change.

Why copy-in plus MIT is the point

shadcn/ui states the distribution model in one sentence: “This is not a component library. It is how you build your component library.” Ply does that for Angular components styled with Tailwind CSS v4: npx ply-ui-cli add writes TypeScript and HTML into your repo. There is no runtime UI package.

An npm kit can be MIT and still leave the templates on the other side of node_modules. @angular/material recorded 2,443,745 weekly downloads for 16–22 Aug 2026 — a real library, a real dependency. Ply’s free tier is MIT and source you already own after add. Publishing the hub means the same files are readable before you install, reviewable in a PR, and forkable if we disappear.

The bus-factor answer does not change: installed components live in your git. Deleting the CLI does not change your app. The public tree is the extra copy, not a new runtime.

How to get the source

Read it. The public hub is an Angular workspace: free components, specs, CLI, and MCP. Hub CI is on main. Discussions are on for questions; issues for bugs.

Install it into an app. Same commands as before:

npx ply-ui-cli init --yes
npx ply-ui-cli add button card dialog --yes
npx ply-ui-cli doctor

add with no name opens the catalog picker in a terminal. --yes and CI need explicit names. Files land in src/app/components/<name>/ by default. After a free add, the CLI prints the MIT source URL on the hub.

Let an agent do it. npx -y ply-ui-mcp on Cursor, Claude Code, VS Code, Windsurf, and other local hosts. ChatGPT and Gemini use the Streamable HTTP connector at https://mcp.ply-ui.com/mcp. Setup: /getting-started/#ai-agents-mcp.

Contribute. Free, CLI, and MCP pull requests merge on github.com/ply-ui-ng/ply. Do not open those PRs against the private docs/Pro tree. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

What you can ship on the free tier

The free catalog is the same one that builds the live dashboard demo (source): shell, forms, toasts, dialogs, the styled table, icons, dark mode. A walkthrough of that path is Build a real Angular admin dashboard without paying. This post is the license change, not a second dashboard tutorial.

Commercial use is allowed. Redistributing the MIT source is allowed. You do not need an account or a license key for the 128. You do need a Pro license for the 90 — one-time, $99 per developer, no subscription. Templates are separate.

What did not change

• Copy-in install. diff / update / three-way merge still track files in your repo.
• Angular 22, signals, standalone, zoneless-ready, Tailwind v4. No required custom theme file.
• The Pro catalog, Polar checkout, and the Pro registry worker.
• The rename: the product is Ply. Selectors are ply-*. The old base-ui-cli names point at ply-ui-cli.

If you want the decision table against Material, PrimeNG, NG-ZORRO, Taiga, and Spartan, that is /compare and Copy-in or npm.

npx ply-ui-cli add card

Then open the file it wrote. The license on that file is MIT. That is the update.