Funambol Licensing
Sync4j has two licensing options, following what is known as "dual licensing"
model. After the adoption by MySQL(http://www.mysql.org) this model is becoming very successful as a way to support open source development.
The guiding business principle of dual licensing is one of fair exchange, or Quid pro Quo ("something for something"). From a licensing perspective, there are two different products depending on usage and distribution, though technically they have the same source code.
- For those developing open source applications, the Open Source License
allows you to offer your software under an open source / free software license
(GLP) to all who wish to use, modify, and distribute it freely. The Open
Source License allows you to use the software at no charge under the condition
that if you use Sync4j in an application you redistribute, the complete source
code for your application must be available and freely redistributable under
reasonable conditions. Sync4j bases its interpretation of the GPL on the Free
Software Foundation's Frequently Asked
Questions(http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html).
- The Commercial License, which allows you to provide commercial software licenses to your customers or distribute Sync4j-based applications within your organization. This is for organizations that do not want to release the source code for their applications as open source / free software; in other words they do not want to comply with the GNU General Public License (GPL). If you want more information on pricing, please contact license@sync4j.org.
The idea is to get the best out open source (high quality software, a community
of people working together, no vendor lock-in), while providing a source of
income to pay for the development of the software (yep, Sync4j developers need
to eat...).
In their simplest form, the following are general licensing guidelines:
- If your software is licensed under either the GPL-compatible Free Software License as defined by the Free Software Foundation or approved by OSI, then use our GPL licensed version.
- If you distribute a proprietary application in any way, and you are not licensing and distributing your source code under GPL, you need to purchase a commercial license of Sync4j
Commercially licensed customers get commercially supported product with
assurances from Funambol(http://www.funambol.com). Commercially licensed users are also free from the requirement of making their own application open source.
For OEM's, ISVs, corporate, and government users, a commercial license is the proper solution because it provides you with assurance from the vendor and releases you from the strict requirements of the GPL license.
Nevertheless, you can test Sync4j under the GPL license and inspect the source code before you purchase a commercial non-GPL license.