Licensing

Open Source Licenses

We are committed to the the open source movement. Our goal is to develop high quality software products and tools which are fairly licensed using agreements which comply the definition of open source used by programmes such as the Open Source Certification Program

When we are developing our own software "from scratch" we tend to use two main forms of license:

    * GNU General Public License (GPL)
    * GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)

All of our main software products are licensed using the GPL. Some of our lower level components are licensed using the LGPL. The main difference between the two licenses is that the GPL is much more restrictive about third parties using the software as part of proprietary software products.

We are also very keen to to avoid re-inventing wheels. This means that, from time to time, we will use an existing piece of open source software as the basis of some development work. This is an essential component of the open source movement. Of course, in these cases, we are bound by the terms of the original license relating to derivitive works and may therefore produce software which carries a different open source license.

Commercial Licenses

The restrictions in the GPL concerning use in proprietary software products have been placed there in order to level the playing field between open source software developers and developers of proprietary products. Although we are fervent supporters of the open source movement, we also believe in customer choice and realise that, in some cases, customers may still opt for the perceived security of proprietary software.

We have nothing against proprietary software developers. Indeed, some of our best friends are proprietary software developers (hello Chas!). For this reason - plus the minor matter of earning enough to put a roof over our heads, pay for the beer we (and some of our proprietary software developer friends) consume and bankrolling the development of even more and better kick-ass open source software - we are more than happy to discuss commercial license arrangements with software companies who wish to embed our software within their products but who, for whatever reason, don't want to be constricted by the terms of the GPL.

If you would like to discuss commercial licenses for any of K-Int's software, please don't hesitate to contact us