Eve Manifest

Virtual Machine

Eve is a multi-paradigm scripting language that runs on its own virtual machine. The machine is a stand-alone program, written in Zig. It does not depend on other languages or libraries: the standard library is built from scratch, with a "batteries included" approach.

Operational Capabilities

The capabilities of the language, the virtual machine and the standard library are delivered version by version: files and data formats, databases, the network client, parallel processing, the server and the web. The plan of the features is kept with the specification, in the Eve repository.

Code Example

This Eve program calculates the 5th number in the Fibonacci sequence. Here's a breakdown:

# Fibonacci series demonstrate
primary aspect fibonacci is

  ** declare Fibonacci method
  function fib(n:Integer) => (@y:Integer) is
    if n < 2 do
      let y := n; ** fib(0) = 0, fib(1) = 1
    else
      let y := fib(n-1) + fib(n-2);
    done;
  return;

  process main is
    ** local variable for result
    ** call fib function using argument 5
    new r := fib(5);

    ** print the result to console
    print r;
  return;
end fibonacci;

Explanation

• Aspect and Function Definition:
  • The line "aspect fibonacci is" declares the main program named "fibonacci".
  • The line "function fib(n:Integer) => (y:Integer)" defines a function named "fib" that takes an integer "n" as input and returns an integer value.
• Recursive Calculation:
  • The "fib" function uses recursion to calculate the nth Fibonacci number.
  • The "if" statement checks if "n" is either 1 or 0, which are the base cases in the sequence (fib(0) is 0, fib(1) is 1).
  • The "else" block calculates "fib(n)" using the values of "fib(n-1)" and "fib(n-2)", demonstrating recursion.
• Main Program Execution:
  • The "process" block defines the main execution flow.
  • The line "new r := fib(5);" declares the variable "r", calls the "fib" function with "5" and assigns the result (5) to "r".
  • The "print r;" statement displays the calculated value to the console.

This brief demo has only scratched the surface. The next pages explain the language in detail.

License

Eve is developed by its author as one language with one official implementation. The specification text, the "EVE" name and the reference code are governed by three separate licenses: they keep the ideas owned by the author, allow learning and non-profit work, and prevent dialect fragmentation.

Specification License

The formal specification, grammar definitions, and language manuals are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

• Attribution: anyone distributing, adapting or referencing the specification must credit Elucian Moise as its author, link to the license and indicate if changes were made.
• Non-commercial: the text may be shared and adapted for learning, teaching, research and non-profit projects. Commercial use needs written permission from the author.
• Share alike: an adaptation must be distributed under the same license. Improvements are welcome back in the official specification and tutorial. An adapted specification must not use the name EVE as if it were the official one (see Trademark).
• Where: the license text is the file spec/LICENSE of the repository. The same license covers the text of this tutorial and the manual. The code examples of this tutorial are licensed under the Apache License 2.0, so you can copy, adapt and run them freely (Sage-Code Laboratory licensing, LICENSE.md).

Implementation Grant

The specification carries an explicit grant that says which implementations are allowed:

Permission is hereby granted to create, distribute, and execute compilers, interpreters, virtual machines, transpilers, IDE tools, and runtime environments that implement the language syntax and semantics defined in this specification, for non-commercial purposes (learning, teaching, research, non-profit projects), provided such implementations comply with the EVE Compliance and Trademark Policy. A commercial implementation requires written permission from the author.

Trademark & Compliance

Copyright protects the wording of the specification; trademark protects the name "EVE" and the logo, which belong to Sage-Code Laboratory, and keeps the ecosystem from splitting into incompatible dialects, the way Oracle stewards Java or the Rust Foundation stewards Rust. The full policy is the file TRADEMARK.md of the repository.

• Allowed: anyone may write "Built for EVE", "EVE compatible" or "Based on the EVE language specification" to describe their own product, if it is true.
• Not allowed without written permission: publishing a modified compiler, virtual machine or distribution under the name "EVE".
• Compliance requirement: an implementation may only call itself an "EVE Compiler" or claim to be "EVE Compliant" if it passes the official conformance test suite or strictly adheres to the published specification.
• Incompatible implementations: modified or extended dialects must not be presented as official EVE and should instead describe themselves as "based on the EVE language specification".

Reference Code License

The Eve virtual machine published by the project (written in Zig, folder evevm/) and its tools are licensed under the Business Source License 1.1 (BUSL-1.1). The source is public: you may copy, modify and redistribute it, and use it in production within the Additional Use Grant, which excludes offering the VM as a competing commercial product or hosted service. On the Change Date the code becomes available under the Apache License 2.0. The license text and its parameters are the file evevm/LICENSE. Another implementation may be written from the specification for non-commercial purposes, under the specification license; a commercial one needs written permission.

Legal Notice

The following notice accompanies the EVE Specification repository and documentation:

EVE Language Specification
Copyright (c) 2026 Elucian Moise.

This specification document is licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). To view a copy of this license, visit:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

The Eve virtual machine (evevm/) is licensed under the Business Source
License 1.1; see evevm/LICENSE.

IMPLEMENTATION GRANT:
Subject to the terms of CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, permission is granted to
implement software compilers, interpreters, virtual machines, static
analyzers, and tooling based on this specification for non-commercial use.
Commercial use requires written permission from the author.

TRADEMARK & COMPLIANCE:
The name "EVE" and associated language logos are trademarks of
Sage-Code Laboratory (see TRADEMARK.md in the repository). Implementations may only use "EVE" in their title if they strictly
conform to this official specification. Modified or incompatible dialects must
not be represented as official EVE implementations.