Many people are asking us about our License Model and apparently it's far more confusing than what we tend to believe. I guess that's probably an argument against implicit knowledge or knowledge persons tends to take for granted other people understands. I'm gonna try to as easy as possible explain here how the License Model for Gaia Ajax Widgets works and how it affects you as an end user.
The first thing you must understand about Gaia Ajax Widgets is that it's a
Dual Licensed product. Basically when you're creating an application with Gaia Ajax Widgets you have two choices;
The GPL version is an Open Source version and is basically taken from the
FSF.org website. Note that we in Frost Innovation have NOT adopted the 3rd version of GPL which means that Gaia Ajax Widgets still uses the GPL version 2. This license can be found at our
license page. To make a long story short the license basically says that if you develop Open Source software yourself and are willing to license your own work as GPL you can use this one as you wish and we will not charge you or control your end product in any ways. Though since Gaia relies heavily on JavaScript it IS considered a distribution merely putting that application online and making it accessible to people from outside your company and this DO force you into releasing the source code for that application! If you're building an intranet or something which only people employed in your organization will access then you're free to use this license without distributing the source code for it in any ways. If you don't care about the source code and happily would distribute this then also you could use this license.
The GCL is our own license and it means; Gaia Commercial License. This license is something you BUY the rights to use from us. If you haven't bought the rights to use this license from us you CANNOT merely decide upon using this. This license makes it possible for you to create software that uses Gaia and distribute that software without any restrictions (almost) on your own code. This would be the natural choice for most commercial software vendors or commercial products.
But how many licenses do I need?
First of all Gaia Ajax Widgets is 100% royalty free! This means that if you as a PERSON buy one license of Gaia you can create as many derivations (software projects) you want to without ever thinking about paying us anymore than the cost for your initial license purchase. A purchase like this is PERSONAL meaning it is linked to ONE person. This means that if you have 5 developers working on the same project all using Gaia Ajax Widgets and you don't want to distribute the source code for that project you're obliged to purchase 5 licenses. You cannot purchase one license and let the other 4 developers use the GPL version. If you do this you would be obliged to distribute the source code for your end product when you distribute (e.g. put that application online) that application. This is not something we "decide" in anyways, this is a restriction of the GPL license and basically comes from the fact that everybody that adds lines of code to that project would create a derived product and thereby making the GPL restrictions on source code kick in. You might however use the GPL version and link to the GPL version when building the project just for viewing purposes. If you have e.g. a product chief or testers etc which doesn't ADD code to the project but would like to see the daily builds of the project that the developers develop on a day to day basis these people could link to the GPL version when building their "daily builds".
Scenario 1;You have four developers on the same project, each adding code to the project and you have four testers and one product lead which does NOT add code to the project. This means that your four developers would need one license each. You would have to purchase four Gaia Commercial Licenses. Then when your testers and product lead wants to fetch the latest code from the code repository and build this system locally to start their test cycle and view the latest result they could use the GPL version to link to this and build and test as long as they DON'T ADD CODE or MODIFY CODE in the project. Then when your developers are finished with this product you could distribute this product to as many servers and customers as you wish without having any restrictions what so ever on your source code or being forced into paying Frost Innovation any more money in any ways what so ever. These four developers could also create MORE projects, in fact as many projects as they wish and distribute these products too without any restrictions! Gaia Ajax Widgets is 100% Royalty Free!
Scenario 2;You have x developers and these developers creates a project which you only would like to have used internally for employees of your organization. No need to use anything else than the GPL version. Note however that if you hire consultants from other companies or have any other from outside of your organization use this system this would be defined as a "distribution" due to the heavily usage of JavaScript in Gaia and would call for giving these people the complete source code for this project. So to use the GPL for in-house projects might be difficult in many circumstances. Even hired people from e.g. Manpower or other agencies like this is not regarded as "part of your organization" and would render the GPL distribution restrictions kick in!
Scenario 3;You have x developers and they build something you release the source code for to all people that are accessing that system. Feel free to use the GPL as you wish, in fact we encourage projects like this too since it helps us getting more sample code which we in turn can use for our own marketing purposes. These types of projects are projects where we in fact earn a LOT by since it makes it possible for us to point to sample code using Gaia which others can look at an learn Gaia from and be inspired to use Gaia from. We would like (but it's no obligation) to get notified of such projects if you're starting projects like this!
Which VERSION of Gaia can I use?
Gaia Ajax Widgets is something you buy a "snapshot" of. You purchase the existing latest version of Gaia and you're entitled to use that version as long as you wish. But if you want to have updates (future releases) you must buy these too. If you don't want to buy anymore than the existing version that's OK, you can use the version you purchase for as long as you wish in as many projects as you wish! For customers which wants to have more reliability though we do provide SLA or Service Level Agreement contracts which can run forward in time and guarantee that you get access to the x next releases of Gaia from a single purchase for y developers. Also these SLA agreements can give you additional value in the form of telephone support etc, contact
post@gaiaware.net for more details regarding SLAs.
Summary
Basically if you don't want to distribute the source code for your project and you want people which are not employees of your employer to use these products you must buy ONE license for EACH developer that MODIFIES or ADDS code to this project. If you don't want to distribute the applications you create outside your organization/employer OR you want to distribute the source code for your application then use the GPL with pride! :)