Source-available software is

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

released through a

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

distribution model that includes arrangements where the source can be viewed, and in some cases modified, but without necessarily meeting the criteria to be called

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

. The licenses associated with the offerings range from allowing code to be viewed for reference to allowing code to be modified and redistributed for both commercial and non-commercial purposes.

Distinction from free and open-source software

Any software is source-available software as long its source code is distributed along with it, even if the user has no legal rights to use, share, modify or even

compile In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs that ...

it. It is possible for a software to be both source-available software and

proprietary software Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern copyright and int ...

(For example:

Id Software id Software LLC () is an American video game developer based in Richardson, Texas. It was founded on February 1, 1991, by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and ar ...

Doom Doom is another name for damnation. Doom may also refer to: People * Doom (professional wrestling), the tag team of Ron Simmons and Butch Reed * Daniel Doom (born 1934), Belgian cyclist * Debbie Doom (born 1963), American softball pitcher * ...

). In contrast, the definitions of free software and open-source software are much narrower.

Free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

and/or

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...

is also always ''source-available software'', but not all source-available software is also free software and/or open-source software. This is because the official definitions of those terms require considerable additional rights as to what the user can do with the available source (including, typically, the right to use said software, with attribution, in derived commercial products).

Free and open-source licenses

Free software licenses A free-software license is a notice that grants the recipient of a piece of software extensive rights to modify and redistribute that software. These actions are usually prohibited by copyright law, but the rights-holder (usually the author) ...

and open-source software licenses are also source-available software licenses, as they both require the

of the software to be made available.

Non-free licenses

The following source-available software licenses are considered non-free licenses because they have limitations that prevent them from being

according to the

Open Source Initiative The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is the steward of the Open Source Definition, the set of rules that define open source software. It is a California public-benefit nonprofit corporation,_with_501(c)(3).html" ;"title="110. - 6910./ref> is a type o ...

and free to the

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)#501(c)(3), 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed ...

Commons Clause

The Commons Clause, created by Fossa, Inc., is an

addendum An addendum or appendix, in general, is an addition required to be made to a document by its author subsequent to its printing or publication. It comes from the gerundive , plural , "that which is to be added," from (, compare with memorandum, ...

to an

license that restricts users from selling the software. Under the combined license, the software is source-available, but not open-source. On August 22, 2018,

Redis Labs Redis Ltd. (originally Redis Labs, Garantia Data) is a private computer software company headquartered in Mountain View, California. Redis is the sponsor of the open-source in-memory NoSQL database of the same name and the provider of Redis Enter ...

shifted some

Redis Redis (; Remote Dictionary Server) is an in-memory data structure store, used as a distributed, in-memory key–value database, cache and message broker, with optional durability. Redis supports different kinds of abstract data structures, su ...

Modules from the

Affero General Public License The Affero General Public License (Affero GPL and informally Affero License) is a free software license. The first version of the Affero General Public License (AGPLv1), was published by Affero, Inc. in March 2002, and based on the GNU General Pu ...

to a combination of the Apache License 2.0 and the Commons Clause. In September 2018,

Matthew Garrett Matthew Garrett is an Irish technologist, programmer, and free software activist who is a major contributor to a series of free software projects including Linux, GNOME, Debian, Ubuntu, and Red Hat. He has received the Free Software Award ...

criticized Commons Clause calling it an "older way of doing things" and said it "doesn't help the commons".

GitLab Enterprise Edition License (EE License)

The GitLab Enterprise Edition License is used exclusively by

GitLab GitLab Inc. is an open-core company that operates GitLab, a DevOps software package which can develop, secure, and operate software. The open source software project was created by Ukrainian developer Dmitriy Zaporozhets and Dutch developer S ...

's commercial offering. GitLab also releases a Community Edition under the

MIT License The MIT License is a permissive free software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s. As a permissive license, it puts only very limited restriction on reuse and has, therefore, high license comp ...

. GitLab Inc. openly discloses that the EE License makes their Enterprise Edition product "proprietary, closed source code." However, the company makes the source code of the Community Edition public, as well as the repository's issue tracker, and allows users to modify the

. The dual release of the closed-source Enterprise Edition and the open-source Community Edition makes GitLab an

open core The open-core model is a business model for the monetization of commercially produced open-source software. Coined by Andrew Lampitt in 2008, the open-core model primarily involves offering a "core" or feature-limited version of a software pro ...

company.

Mega Limited Code Review Licence

In 2016, Mega Ltd. released the

of their

Mega Mega or MEGA may refer to: Science * mega-, a metric prefix denoting 106 * Mega (number), a certain very large integer in Steinhaus–Moser notation * "mega-" a prefix meaning "large" that is used in taxonomy * Gravity assist, for ''Moon-Eart ...

clients under the Mega Limited Code Review Licence, which only permits usage of the code "for the purposes of review and commentary". The source code was released after former director

Kim Dotcom Kim Dotcom (born Kim Schmitz; 21 January 1974), also known as Kimble and Kim Tim Jim Vestor, is a German-Finnish Internet entrepreneur and political activist who resides in Glenorchy, New Zealand. He first rose to fame in Germany in the 1990s ...

stated that he would "create a Mega competitor that is completely open source and non-profit" following his departure from Mega Ltd.

Microsoft Shared Source Initiative

Microsoft's

Shared Source Initiative The Shared Source Initiative (SSI) is a source-available software licensing scheme launched by Microsoft in May 2001. The program includes a spectrum of technologies and licenses, and most of its source code offerings are available for download aft ...

, launched in May 2001, comprises 5 licenses, 2 of which are

and 3 of which are restricted. The restricted licenses under this scheme are the Microsoft Limited Public License (Ms-LPL), the Microsoft Limited Reciprocal License (Ms-LRL), and the Microsoft Reference Source License (Ms-RSL).

Old Scilab License

Prior to version 5,

Scilab Scilab is a free and open-source, cross-platform numerical computational package and a high-level, numerically oriented programming language. It can be used for signal processing, statistical analysis, image enhancement, fluid dynamics simulat ...

described itself as "the open source platform for

numerical computation Numerical analysis is the study of algorithms that use numerical approximation (as opposed to symbolic manipulations) for the problems of mathematical analysis (as distinguished from discrete mathematics). It is the study of numerical methods th ...

" but had a license that forbade commercial redistribution of modified versions. Versions 5 and later are distributed under the

GPL The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general u ...

-compatible

CeCILL CeCILL (from CEA CNRS INRIA Logiciel Libre) is a free software license adapted to both international and French legal matters, in the spirit of and retaining compatibility with the GNU General Public License (GPL). It was jointly developed by ...

license.

Server Side Public License

The Server Side Public License is a modification of the

GNU General Public License version 3 The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general u ...

created by the

MongoDB MongoDB is a source-available cross-platform document-oriented database program. Classified as a NoSQL database program, MongoDB uses JSON-like documents with optional schemas. MongoDB is developed by MongoDB Inc. and licensed under the Serve ...

project. It adds a clause stating that if SSPL-licensed software is incorporated into a "service" offered to other users, the source code for the entirety of the service must be released under the SSPL. The license has been considered non-free by

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of D ...

and

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide. Red Hat has become ass ...

(with software licensed under it therefore banned from their

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

distributions), as well as the

, as it contains conditions that are unduly discriminatory towards commercial use of the software.

SugarCRM Public License

In 2007

Michael Tiemann Michael Tiemann is an American software developer and executive, serving as vice president of open source affairs at Red Hat, Inc., and former President of the Open Source Initiative. Biography He earned a bachelor's degree from the Moore Scho ...

, president of OSI, had criticized companies such as

SugarCRM SugarCRM is a software company based in Silicon Valley. It produces the on-premises and cloud-based web application Sugar, a customer relationship management (CRM) system. SugarCRM's functionality includes sales-force automation, marketing cam ...

for promoting their software as "open source" when in fact it did not have an OSI-approved license. In SugarCRM's case, it was because the software is so-called " badgeware" since it specified a "badge" that must be displayed in the user interface. SugarCRM's open source version was re-licensed under the GPL version 3 in 2007, and later the GNU Affero GPL version 3 in 2010.

TrueCrypt License

The TrueCrypt License was used by the

TrueCrypt TrueCrypt is a discontinued source-available freeware utility used for on-the-fly encryption (OTFE). It can create a virtual encrypted disk within a file, or encrypt a partition or the whole storage device ( pre-boot authentication). On 28 M ...

disk encryption Disk encryption is a technology which protects information by converting it into unreadable code that cannot be deciphered easily by unauthorized people. Disk encryption uses disk encryption software or hardware to encrypt every bit of data that g ...

utility As a topic of economics, utility is used to model worth or value. Its usage has evolved significantly over time. The term was introduced initially as a measure of pleasure or happiness as part of the theory of utilitarianism by moral philosopher ...

. When TrueCrypt was discontinued, the VeraCrypt

fork In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from la, furca 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods ei ...

switched to the Apache License, but retained the TrueCrypt License for code inherited from TrueCrypt. The

rejects the TrueCrypt License, as "it has elements incompatible with the OSD." The

criticizes the license for restricting who can execute the program, and for enforcing a trademark condition.

BeeGFS End User License Agreement

BeeGFS EULA is the license of the distributed parallel file system BeeGFS, except the client for Linux, which is licensed under

GPLv2 The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general us ...

. BeeGFS source code is publicly available from their website, and because of this they claiming BeeGFS as "Open-Source" software; it is in fact not because this license prohibits distributing modified versions of the software, or using certain features of the software without authorization.

References

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