OpenClaw stays free. It stays open-source. It stays self-hosted and local-first. You own your data. No vendor lock-in despite the OpenAI sponsorship.
One thing did change. Auth mode "none" was permanently removed in version 2026.1.29. You now need a token or password to run OpenClaw. If you were running without auth before that version, your setup broke on upgrade. This was a security hardening decision. Running an AI agent with no authentication was always a risk, and the maintainers closed that gap.
For your day-to-day workflow, nothing else is different. Your config files and skills carry over unchanged. Your agent memory databases work the same way they did before the transition.