Software Licenses

Commercial Software

Some Lighterra software is distributed as normal commercial software, with a conventional commercial software license.

The license used for most Lighterra commercial software is called, unsurprisingly, the Lighterra Commercial Software License, or LCSL. It's a fairly typical commercial license, and somewhat more generous than most such licenses.

In essence, the software is licensed, not sold, to you. Lighterra and/or its suppliers retain ownership of the software itself, and you are granted a non-exclusive license to install and use the software on your system(s), up to the number of licenses you have purchased. The software does not come with source code, and you may not attempt to decompile or reverse engineer the software.

Lighterra's commercial software license restricts the number of simultaneous uses, not the number of installations. So if, for example, you have both a desktop and a laptop computer, you may purchase just a single license and install the software on both systems, as long as you only use it on one system at any time.

Lighterra's commercial software license also provides a one year warranty that the software will perform substantially in accordance with the behavior described in its advertising and accompanying documentation. This is unlike most commercial software which, sadly, comes with no warranty at all.

Please read the complete Lighterra Commercial Software License for further details.

Enquiries regarding the Lighterra Commercial Software License should be directed to legal@lighterra.com.

iPhone/iPad Apps

As a special case, most of Lighterra's iPhone and iPad apps are distributed under Apple's standard software license for iOS apps - the App Store Licensed Application End User License Agreement (EULA).

Apple's App Store EULA has the same basic properties as most commercial software licenses, but adds additional restrictions required for compliance with the App Store Terms & Conditions.

One important additional restriction is that you may not later resell or redistribute an app obtained through the App Store, whereas that is normally allowed for most commercial software.

Enquiries regarding the Apple App Store EULA should be directed to Apple at sw.license@apple.com.

Open-Source Software

A number of pieces of Lighterra software are distributed as open source, where the source code for the software is included with the software itself, or is downloadable from the Lighterra web site, so you can change it if you wish.

Open source is not the same as "public domain", which means the copyright on a work has expired or been explicitly relinquished. In fact, most open-source software, including Lighterra's open-source software, is not in the public domain. Nor is open source the same as freeware, which means software distributed for no money. Many pieces of freeware are not open source.

The article "Open Source - Resistance Is Futile, Or Is It?" contains a good explanation of the differences between freeware, public domain and open source, and the different types of open-source licenses in widespread use today.

Open-source software licensing is a complex issue, and it is vitally important to understand exactly which license(s) you are dealing with if you're involved in developing open-source software, or developing commercial software which makes use of open-source libraries or components.

Lighterra offers its open source code dual-licensed under the:

The basic intent is that:

  1. You may combine either open or closed source code with this code, and the result may be sold commercially if you wish.
  2. If you make any changes or additions to this source code you must publish them, typically by sending them back to the original author or project to be integrated into the main public distribution.
  3. You must acknowledge that your software uses this code by displaying a suitable notice somewhere, typically in an "about" dialog box, command-line version flag output, manual or other documentation.

If you are unsure whether this licensing fits your particular situation, please contact legal@lighterra.com for clarification.

Every file of open source code from Lighterra should have a license statement at the top, like this one, describing its licensing in detail.

Lighterra's open-source software is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, however software distributed under either the MPL or the LGPL is distributed on an "AS IS" basis, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, either expressed or implied; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the MPL and the LGPL for details.