Source-available software is

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

released through a

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

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 and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

''. 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'' in the broad sense as long as its source code is distributed along with it, even if the user has no legal rights to use, share, modify or even compile it. It is possible for a software to be both source-available software and

proprietary software Proprietary software is computer software, software that grants its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner a legal monopoly by modern copyright and intellectual property law to exclude the recipient from freely sharing t ...

(e.g.

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: game programmer, programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer T ...

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

Free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

and/or

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...

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). In the broad sense, any FOSS license is a ''source-available'' license. In the narrow sense, the term ''source-available'' specifically excludes FOSS software.

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 a California public benefit corporation "actively involved in Open Source community-building, education, and public advocacy to promote awareness and the importance of non-proprietary software". Governance The ...

and free to the

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985. The organisation supports 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 shifted some

Redis Redis (; Remote Dictionary Server) is an in-memory key–value database, used as a distributed cache and message broker, with optional durability. Because it holds all data in memory and because of its design, Redis offers low- latency reads ...

Modules from the

GNU Affero General Public License The GNU Affero General Public License (GNU AGPL) is a free, copyleft license published by the Free Software Foundation in November 2007, and based on the GNU GPL version 3 and the ''Affero General Public License'' (non-GNU). It is intended fo ...

to a combination of the

Apache License The Apache License is a permissive free software license written by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). It allows users to use the software for any purpose, to distribute it, to modify it, and to distribute modified versions of the software ...

2.0 and the Commons Clause. In September 2018, Matthew Garrett criticized Commons Clause calling it an "older way of doing things" and said it "doesn't help the

commons The commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable Earth. These resources are held in common even when owned privately or publicly. Commons ...

Business Source License

Business Source License has been introduced by MariaDB Corporation in 2016 and rapidly became one of the most adopted "delayed open source" licenses. It prohibits use of the code in production environments, where a commercial license is required.

Functional Source License

Functional Source License has been introduced in November 2023 by Sentry, as a simpler alternative to Business Source License. It prohibits any "competing" use of the code, to preserve the rights of the author to economically exploit it, but applies for a limited time, after which the code itself is considered to be available under

MIT License The MIT License is a permissive software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s. As a permissive license, it puts very few restrictions on reuse and therefore has high license compatibility. Unl ...

GitLab Enterprise Edition License (EE License)

The GitLab Enterprise Edition License is used exclusively by

GitLab GitLab is a software forge primarily developed by GitLab Inc. It is available as a community edition and a commercial edition. History GitLab was created in 2011 by Ukrainian programmer Dmitriy Zaporozhets as a side project written in Rub ...

's commercial offering. GitLab Inc. openly discloses that the EE License makes their Enterprise Edition product "proprietary, closed source code." GitLab also releases an open-source Community Edition under the

. This makes GitLab an example of an open core company.

Mega Limited Code Review Licence

In 2016, Mega Ltd. released the

of their Mega 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 before former director Kim Dotcom 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, 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 simul ...

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 t ...

" but had a license that forbade commercial redistribution of modified versions. Versions 5 and later are distributed under the GPL-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 The Server Side Public License (SSPL) is a Source-available software, source-available copyleft software license introduced by MongoDB Inc. in 2018. It includes most of the text and provisions of the GNU Affero General Public License version ...

is a modification of the

created by the

MongoDB MongoDB is a source-available, cross-platform, document-oriented database program. Classified as a NoSQL database product, MongoDB uses JSON-like documents with optional database schema, schemas. Released in February 2009 by 10gen (now MongoDB ...

project. It modifies a clause relating to usage of the licensed work over a network, stating that if SSPL-licensed software is incorporated into a "service" offered to other users, the source code for the entirety of the service (including without limitation all software and APIs that would be required for a user to run an instance of the service themselves) must be released under the SSPL. The license is considered non-free by the

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

and

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. (formerly Red Hat Software, Inc.) is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises and is a subsidiary of IBM. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North ...

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

Open Compensation Token License

The Open Compensation Token License is commercial source-available software license. The key idea is to keep software extendable by everyone and to combine this with fair payment. Commercial uses of the software require commercial licensing and the funds are distributed via technical means to the contributors. The German company iunera created the license during a project to optimize public transport usage. The license works by registering source code artifacts as code tokens on the blockchain. Every developer who builds on prior software needs to register the dependencies that he or she uses via the blockchain. This ensures that the prior labor by other developers is acknowledged. Commercial applications require a obtaining a license via the blockchain. The license cost is computed as a percentage of the invested work hours. Licensing funds are distributed based on the dependencies to the code token owners via blockchain. Anyone who extends source code which is licensed with the Open Compensation Token License is required to use the same license. The license webpage is explicitly stating it is non

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

SugarCRM Public License

In 2007 Michael Tiemann, president of OSI, had criticized companies such as SugarCRM 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 software, utility used for on-the-fly encryption (OTFE). It can create a virtual encrypted disk within a file, encrypt a Disk partitioning, partition, or encrypt the whole Data storag ...

disk encryption Disk encryption is a technology which protects information by converting it into code that cannot be deciphered easily by unauthorized people or processes. Disk encryption uses disk encryption software or disk encryption hardware, hardware to encry ...

utility In economics, utility is a measure of a certain person's satisfaction from a certain state of the world. Over time, the term has been used with at least two meanings. * In a normative context, utility refers to a goal or objective that we wish ...

. When TrueCrypt was discontinued, the

VeraCrypt VeraCrypt is a free and open-source utility for on-the-fly encryption (OTFE). The software can create a virtual encrypted disk that works just like a regular disk but within a file. It can also encrypt a partition or (in Windows) the entire sto ...

fork switched to the

, 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 Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or copyleft, ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was th ...

. BeeGFS source code is publicly available from their website, and because of this they claim that 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

{{DEFAULTSORT:Source-available software Software licensing