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1060 Public License FAQ
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Legal Notice
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This FAQ document is an interpretation of the 1060 Public License v1.0 to help you understand how you may use and
redistribute the 1060 NetKernel. It is not a legally binding document. The 1060 Public License constitutes the only legal agreement and
understanding between 1060 Research Limited and a licensee. No offers are made or implied in this FAQ |
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Terms of Use
Can I use the 1060 NetKernel for free?
Yes, provided the applications and services you execute with the kernel are open sourced under an OSI certified
license. You may only execute closed source applications if they have been certified by us. A
supplier of closed source components will make it clear to you that their component has been certified.
If you want to execute closed source components and those components are not certified by us you
must buy a commercial license from us.
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How do I know if I need a commercial license?
If you've read the 1060 Public License and this FAQ and you are either:
- Hosting remotely accessible applications or services on NetKernel for which you are not
prepared to open source your code.
- Distributing the 1060 NetKernel in any
form, including remotely accessible services (see below), with your application and you cannot allow
your code to be open sourced
- Using the 1060 NetKernel to run closed-source components or applications not certified
by us then Yes you must purchase a commercial license.
For an explanation of remote accessible and distribution see below
You might also chose to purchase a commercial license as a less expensive alternative to the administrative costs
of open source compliance - if you are happy to issue open source but it takes time and effort to
ensure your code is publicly available and maintained then it may be convenient and cost effective
to obtain a commercial license. You may also require a commercial license if you wish to purchase
a support package - see support packages for options.
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What do you mean by Source Code?
Source Code includes traditional procedural code such as Java classes, Java scripts, XQuery scripts etc,
it also includes declarative code such
as SQL queries, XSLT, DPML processes, XRL pages, XHTML pages etc, as well as any static configuration, documentation etc,
necessary for the
operation of the service or application.
All of these are considered to be source code and should be made available on a publicly accessible server under an OSI license.
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I intend to distribute closed source components that will be executed by the 1060 NetKernel, do I need a commercial license?
Either your end-users need a commercial 1060 NetKernel license or you require a 1060 Development License. The 1060 Public
License states that if your consumer has a publicly licensed distribution of the 1060 NetKernel, i.e. freely obtained, and
they wish to install a component, that component must either be open source or must have been issued by an
authorized 1060 Developer Licensee with permission to distribute and execute closed source executable
components. If you do not obtain a Developer License then your consumer cannot execute your code or is
obliged to obtain a closed source license. A 1060 Development License is a cost effective option, more details can
be found at www.1060research.com.
Of course if you open source your component there is no problem.
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Do you offer Educational/Academic licensing terms?
Certainly, although if you publish your source you are free to use it anyway. Please contact us to discuss your requirements.
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How can you make money if you release the source?
The 1060 Public License is carefully constructed
to mandate that applications and services developed on top of NetKernel must also
be open-sourced. In short, NetKernel is on the commons but you have to pay to
take it off - in particular, unlike GPL, this kicks in when using NetKernel as
a part of a remotely accessible service. To put it another way, our
users must pay to keep their code private.
We believe that there are many applications for which the open source licensing conditions will
be acceptable and this will encourage propagation of the 1060 NetKernel and increase the capability
of the platform to everyone's benefit.
We also believe that in many commercial deployments it would cause difficulties
to conform to an open source model. For example, an application that embodies a business
relationship, a specialist application for a limited commercial market, a custom system integration
application developed in confidence by a consultancy for a client. In these cases we offer a
conventional closed source commercial license.
Even where open-source is not commercially sensitive the administrative cost of compliance with our open-source requirements
may be higher than the cost of acquiring a license. In this case a commercial license is cost-effective
compared with monitoring access to and maintaining public source code.
Lastly you may require a license if you require certain support packages.
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Redistribution
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What does distribution mean?
Distribution is the deployment of 1060 copyright code or executable with your application to
more than a single geographical site - by this we mean a location with a postal address characterized
by a zip/postal code.
In particular we consider an application or service hosted at one physical
location that is invoked from a remote physical location to be a distribution - as such any source
code for the application or service must be published under an OSI approved open source license
and made available on a publicly accessible server, unless closed licensing terms have been agreed with 1060 Research.
Can I redistribute the 1060 NetKernel with my application/component?
Yes, provided you are licensing your application under either the 1060 Public License or an
OSI certified license. However only your own application source code is covered by your chosen
license, the 1060 NetKernel must only be redistributed under the 1060 Public License.
In addition you must prominently display the 1060 copyright information and reproduce the
1060 Public License in full. The 1060 Public License obliges you to provide, with your
distribution and on a publicly accessible server, the source code to any of your application
code that invokes the kernel directly or embeds the kernel as a component of a larger application
or invokes the kernel through an RPC or remote service call for example using SOAP.
If you cannot open source your application/component you must obtain a commercial license from us to
distribute the 1060 NetKernel.
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I use the 1060 NetKernel to provide a remotely accessible service. Does this count as distribution?
Yes. We require that remotely accessible code, or software as service as it is sometimes called, is
equivalent to a full redistribution and so the usual distribution terms apply. Therefore you may freely
use the 1060 NetKernel if you release the source code to your service - if you do not wish to release your
source then you must obtain a closed license.
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I am using the 1060 NetKernel as a part of a service that is remotely accessible but not publicly accessible. Does this count as a
distribution?
Yes. Even though the service is private you are allowing access from a different location and
so this is a distribution. You are required to provide the source code to your application on
a publicly accessible server, or obtain a commercial license.
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I am in an organization with two sites, I want to roll out an application to both sites does this count as distribution?
Yes.
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I have deployed the 1060 NetKernel on more than one host at a single site is this considered a distribution?
No, you are free to use the 1060 NetKernel on as many machines as you wish at a single physical
site. However if you require support you may need to purchase support licenses for each installation - please see the support packages for details.
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Open Source
Is the 1060 Public License a viral license like the GPL?
Yes and No.
The license requires that any component or application that is distributed with the
1060 NetKernel must be licensed under an OSI open source license. This is not viral
it just says a redistribution must be open-source or else a commercial license must be obtained.
However if the 1060 NetKernel is modified, or combined with any other software either embedded
or as part of service, then a distribution of the derivative software must be licensed under the
1060 Public License. This is a self-propogating license requirement similar to the self-propogation
of the GPL.
The 1060 Public License is a commercial open-source license. It is designed to permit free use
but place strong constraints on closed source redistributions. A license for closed source
redistribution can be purchased from www.1060research.com
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Why didn't you use the GPL?
We believe that open source code offers many benefits over closed source code in particular
for infrastructural software technologies - we believe the GPL should be recognized as largely
responsible for this. We also recognize that for pragmatic reasons much commercial code will
remain closed since it implements trade secrets or codifies business relationships.
We required a license that maintained the spirit of the GPL but also allowed us the opportunity
to issue commercial licenses for those parties that cannot conform to a fully open source model.
In addition we wanted usage terms (1a) that mandate open source technology - this requirement
will have limited effect on the open source community's use of the software but will hinder
commercial users who have not purchased a license.
Furthermore, we required a license that was compatible with the current growth of 'software as
service'. The GPL has a traditional view of a software application and libraries, we wanted
to clarify the usage and distribution terms for both the traditional application and the remote
software service models.
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I want to distribute my component/application under GPL. Does the GPL clash with the 1060 Public License?
We are exploring the relationship between the 1060 Public License and the GPL. Both make
requirements about the licensing for a combined work. Until this is clarified the 1060 Public License
is the only license under which you may redistribute a combined work. The relevant part of the GPL states:
"This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into proprietary programs.
If your program is a subroutine library, you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications
with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Library General Public License instead of this License."
Whilst we don't consider the 1060 NetKernel to be a "proprietary program" the simple solution is to license
your component or application using the LGPL. If you really want to use a GPL license for your software
then you cannot currently redistribute any 1060 Public licensed software with it. However, an end user may
freely use the 1060 NetKernel with your GPL component but you must effectively make two separate distributions.
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Aren't you going against the spirit of free open source?
There are many open source models and philosophies.
In practical terms we believe open source is the best model for developing robust, secure,
trustworthy software. We believe open source provides the consumer with an assurance of openness
from proprietary lock-in. We believe widespread propagation of a common open software infrastructure
benefits everyone. We are pragmatic, we summarize our position as: If you're open we're free. If you
cannot open your source code you need a license from us. We believe this position is to the maximum
benefit of all.
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Who else has an open source software business model and sells closed licenses?
There are several well known companies that offer closed licenses to their open source technologies.
For example: Sleepycat and the Berkley DB, MySQL and the MySQL DB and GhostScript. We
believe this will become an increasingly common model for commercial software companies.
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You frequently refer to the Open Source Initiative and OSI certification. Why isn't the 1060 Public License OSI certified?
We have not yet requested certification of the 1060 Public License. We are not clear
whether our usage term 1a, which states that a licensee can freely execute open source components
but cannot execute closed source components unless certified by us, is in accordance with the OSI.
Not to be OSI certified may look hypocritical but we are also a commercial concern with a business
model that is expressed through our license. We would very much like to receive OSI certification
since we believe our license is closely in spirit with the OSI.
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Where can I find out more about OSI certified licenses?
Visit www.opensource.org
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Why is the language of the 1060 Public License so harsh?
It turns out that there's no pleasantries permitted in law ;-) We don't want the license
to be mean spirited and we hope you'll find it a generous proposition. However the lawyers
insist that legal agreements are unambiguous and clear and so that means terse and sometimes
hard-nosed language.
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What is your position on Software Patents?
Software patents are increasingly recognized throughout the world as legitimate intellectual
property rights and we have no choice but to respect them. Unfortunately software patents
may prove to be disproportionately restrictive to the open source community since the source
code is available and can be contested by a patent holder - unlike closed source which may
be equally infringing but is not observable.
The open source community can best defend itself against patents by frequently publishing in
the public domain as many software inventions as possible. An invention that has been publicly
published cannot be protected by a future patent claim. In the case of a patent that has already
been filed, the community can help by seeking to find prior art (previously published public knowledge)
that defeats the claims of the patent.
For commercial reasons we must reserve the right to apply for patents in NetKernel technologies. Such patents
as are granted will be used for defensive purposes both for ourselves and the broader open source community.
We will create an open patent pool that will be free to license for legitimate open source projects.
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