Our software is 100% GPL (General Public License, version 2); if yours is 100% GPL compliant, then you have no obligation to pay us for the licenses. This is a great opportunity for the open source community and those of you who are developing open source software. The formal terms of the GPL license can be found in the website of Free Software Foundation. Please note that the General Public License can be restrictive, so if it doesn't meet your needs, you are better served by our Commercial License. Specifically:
- HapticSeer is free use for those who are 100% GPL. If your application is licensed under GPL or compatible OSI license approved by NTU HCI Lab, you are free to ship any GPL software of NTU HCI Lab with your application ('application' means any type of software application, system, tool or utility). You do not need a separate signed agreement with NTU HCI Lab, because the GPL license is sufficient.
- Under the Open Source License, you must release the complete source code for the application that is built on HapticSeer. You do not need to release the source code for components that are generally installed on the operating system on which your application runs, such as system header files or libraries.
- Free use for those who never copy, modify or distribute. As long as you never distribute (internally or externally) the HapticSeer Software in any way, you are free to use it for powering your application, irrespective of whether your application is under GPL license or not.
- You are allowed to modify HapticSeer Software source code any way you like as long as the distributed derivative work is licensed under the GPL as well.
- You are allowed to copy HapticSeer binaries and source code, but when you do so, the copies will fall under the GPL license.
If you represent a non-profit organization or an academic institution, we recommend you publish your application as an open source / free software project using the GPL license. Thereby, you are free to use HapticSeer software free of charge under the GPL license. We believe that if you have strong reasons to not publish your application in accordance with the GPL, you should purchase commercial licenses. If you are a private individual you are free to use HapticSeer software for your personal applications as long as you do not distribute them. If you distribute them, you must make a decision between the Commercial License and the GPL. Please note that even if you ship a free demo version of your own application, the above rules apply.
Please note that NTU HCI Lab can only give advice on which license is right for you. The final judgment, of course can be made only by a court of law. With that said, we recommend the commercial license to all commercial and government organizations. This frees you from the broad and strict requirements of the GPL license. To anyone in doubt, we recommend the commercial license.
If you wish to derive a commercial advantage by not releasing your application under an open source license, you must purchase a commercial license from NTU HCI Lab. By purchasing commercial license, you are no longer obligated to publish your source code.
Commercial licenses:
- Are perpetual and include upgrades to all minor revisions.
- Are royalty-free
- Remove any obligations to release any source code.
- Are backward compatible.
- Only cover the binary of HapticSeer, and do not cover usage on any non-NTU-HCI-Lab implemented binary. Usage of other component binary is govern by its own license. It is your responsibility to check whether the algorithms you used are patented in your country and contact the patent owner if you want to use them in your commercial software.