Tracardi is available under MIT with Common Clause what is inline with Fair-Code principles.
MIT License
Copyright 2021 Risto Kowaczewski
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
“Commons Clause” License Condition v1.0
The Software is provided to you by the Licensor under the License, as defined below, subject to the following condition.
Without limiting other conditions in the License, the grant of rights under the License will not include, and the License does not grant to you, the right to Sell the Software.
For purposes of the foregoing, “Sell” means practicing any or all of the rights granted to you under the License to provide to third parties, for a fee or other consideration (including without limitation fees for hosting or consulting/ support services related to the Software), a product or service whose value derives, entirely or substantially, from the functionality of the Software. Any license notice or attribution required by the License must also include this Commons Clause License Condition notice.
MIT and Common Clause is Fair-Code?
Fair-code is not a software license. It describes a software model where software:
- is generally free to use and can be distributed by anybody
- has its source code openly available
- can be extended by anybody in public and private communities
- is commercially restricted by its authors to certain use
The fair-code software model promotes the use of profit as a means to continue development of software in a way that is compatible with their author’s short and long-term economic intentions. Although there are many successful projects which have traditionally worked as communities of unpaid professionals and experts, fair-code attempts to create a level playing ground for software authors of all backgrounds, including those that would like to make a living off of their work.
So, can I use Tracardi commercially or not?
As license states Tracardi can be used totally free: privately, and within a company. If, however, you want to commercialize it and charge people money for a, for example, hosted SAAS version you need a commercial license. The use within your company is totally free.
Why fair-code?
There is currently an economic disconnect between the people who create a project and put the most work in and the people who want to make money using it. Fair-code can ensure that projects are long term financially viable for their authors to continue and implement new features, or at least somewhat economically advantageous to their authors should their software succeed. It’s not that they should share all of the profit with the authors, but that fair-code attempts to ensure profitable business relationships which benefits both persons and/or companies.
Many companies today invest resources into taking an existing project and copying the ongoing work of the project creators; afterwards, creating and maintaining a hosted version using their code. In a fair circumstance, should they benefit from using the software, they could add certain features, fix bugs and support the community of users enjoying the product. In many cases they do, but fair-code ensures that this can happen by bringing businesses to the negotiation table when it comes to commercializing software.