License
Open Source/Free Software
Brutus is provided to free software developers as a licensed product under version 2 of the GNU General Public License, commonly known as the "GPL".
One of our primary aims is to foster a community of free software developers around the Brutus framework to provide free replacements to Microsoft Outlook. Out contribution to the Open Source community would therefore be a little, but required, part of what it will take to produce a feature-complete Microsoft Office alternative.
Licensing model
Brutus is distributed under a dual license model. This means that users can choose to use Brutus under the terms of the GPL or under a commercial license.
Are Brutus the same under either license?
Yes. OMC will make stable releases from time to time and base our standard commercial offerings on such releases. Those commercial offerings are available under the GPL as well and you can purchase a commercial license to any version of our products.
The reasoning behind regular stable releases are that it would be a maintainers nightmare to provide commercial support to any one release from our source tree, as many of those would be beta or alpha releases.
Can I use Brutus in my proprietary product?
Yes, but you must purchase a license if you want to use Brutus technology in software not licensed under the terms of the GPL. Please read this for a longer explanation.
Why are the Brutus IDL files not distributed under the LGPL?
While the GNU Lesser General Public License would permit the open source community the use and distribute the Brutus framework, it would also remove any incentive for companies to purchase a commercial license from us.
That would mean that OMC would not recieve the revenue necessary for improving and maintaining Brutus and related products.
Why should I purchase a commercial license? I am only using the IDL files, not any of the implementation source code?
The IDL files are provided under the GPL as are all of Brutus. It does not matter whether you are using any of the actual servant implementation source code or not. All client applications that (in principle at least) are capable of using any Brutus object must use files that are derived from those IDL files. Those derived files, and the client application that are making use of them, are therefore, by virtue of section 2 of the GPL, covered by the GPL.
