Legal Notice: This FAQ document is an interpretation of the 1060 Public License v1.0 to help you understand how you may use and redistribute the 1060 NetKernel. It is not a legally binding document. The 1060 Public License constitutes the only legal agreement and understanding between 1060 Research Limited and a licensee. No offers are made or implied in this FAQ.

• Can I use the 1060 NetKernel for free?
• How do I know if I need a commercial license?
• What do you mean by Source Code?
• I intend to distribute closed source components that will be executed by the 1060 NetKernel, do I need a commercial license?
• Do you offer Educational/Academic licensing terms?
• How can you make money if you release the source?

Redistribution

• What does distribution mean?
• Can I redistribute the 1060 NetKernel with my application/component?
• I use the 1060 NetKernel to provide a remotely accessible service. Does this count as distribution?
• I am using the 1060 NetKernel as a part of a service that is remotely accessible but not publicly accessible. Does this count as a distribution?
• I am in an organization with two sites, I want to roll out an application to both sites does this count as distribution?
• I have deployed the 1060 NetKernel on more than one host at a single site is this considered a distribution?

Open Source

• Is the 1060 Public License a viral license like the GPL?
• Why didn't you use the GPL?
• I want to distribute my component/application under GPL. Does the GPL clash with the 1060 Public License?
• Aren't you going against the spirit of free open source?
• Who else has an open source software business model and sells closed licenses?
• You frequently refer to the Open Source Initiative and OSI certification. Why isn't the 1060 Public License OSI certified?
• Where can I find out more about OSI certified licenses?
• Why is the language of the 1060 Public License so harsh?
• What is your position on Software Patents?

Terms of Use

Yes, provided the applications and services you execute with the kernel are open sourced under an OSI certified license. You may only execute closed source applications if they have been certified by us. A supplier of closed source components will make it clear to you that their component has been certified.

If you want to execute closed source components and those components are not certified by us you must buy a commercial license from us.

If you've read the 1060 Public License and this FAQ and you are either:

1. Hosting remotely accessible applications or services on NetKernel for which you are not prepared to open source your code.
2. Distributing the 1060 NetKernel in any form, including remotely accessible services (see below), with your application and you cannot allow your code to be open sourced
3. Using the 1060 NetKernel to run closed-source components or applications not certified by us then Yes you must purchase a commercial license.

For explanation of remote accessible and distribution see below

You might also chose to purchase a commercial license as a cheaper alternative to the administrative costs of open source compliance - if you are happy to issue open source but it takes time and effort to ensure your code is publicly available and maintained then it may be convenient and cost effective to obtain a commercial license. You may also require a commercial license if you wish to purchase a support package - see support packages for options.

Source Code includes traditional procedural code such as Java classes, Java scripts, Xquery scripts etc, etc, it also includes declarative code such as SQL queries, XSLT, DPML processes, XRL pages, XHTML pages etc etc, as well as any static configuration, documentation etc,etc necessary for the operation of the service or application.

All of these are considered to be source code and should be made available on a publicly accessible server under an OSI license.

Either your end-users need a commercial 1060 NetKernel license or you require a 1060 Development License. The 1060 Public License states that if your consumer has a publicly licensed distribution of the 1060 NetKernel, ie freely obtained, and they wish to install a component, that component must either be open source or must have been issued by an authorized 1060 Developer Licensee with permission to distribute and execute closed source executable components. If you do not obtain a Developer License then your consumer cannot execute your code or is obliged to obtain a closed source license. A 1060 Development License is a cost effective option, more details can be found at www.1060research.com. Of course if you open source your component there is no problem.

Certainly, although if you publish your source you are free to use it anyway. Please contact us to discuss your requirements.

The 1060 Public License is carefully constructed to mandate that applications and services developed on top of NetKernel must also be open-sourced. In short, NetKernel is on the commons but you have to pay to take it off - in particular, unlike GPL, this kicks in when using NetKernel as a part of a remotely accessible service. To put it another way, our users must pay to keep their code private.

We believe that there are many applications for which the open source licensing conditions will be acceptable and this will encourage propagation of the 1060 NetKernel and increase the capability of the platform to everyone's benefit.

We also believe that in many commercial deployments it would cause difficulties to conform to an open source model. For example, an application that embodies a business relationship, a specialist application for a limited commercial market, a custom system integration application developed in confidence by a consultancy for a client. In these cases we offer a conventional closed source commercial license.

Even where open-source is not commercially sensitive the administrative cost of compliance with our open-source requirements may be higher than the cost of acquiring a license. In this case a commercial license is cost-effective compared with monitoring access to and maintaining public source code.

Lastly you may require a license if you require certain support packages.

Redistribution

Distribution is the deployment of 1060 copyright code or executable with your application to more than a single geographical site - by this we mean a location with a postal address characterized by a zip/postal code.

In particular we consider an application or service hosted at one physical location that is invoked from a remote physical location to be a distribution - as such any source code for the application or service must be published under an OSI approved open source license and made available on a publicly accessible server, unless closed licensing terms have been agreed with 1060 Research.

Yes, provided you are licensing your application under either the 1060 Public License or an OSI certified license. However only your own application source code is covered by your chosen license, the 1060 NetKernel must only be redistributed under the 1060 Public License.

In addition you must prominently display the 1060 copyright information and reproduce the 1060 Public License in full. The 1060 Public License obliges you to provide, with your distribution and on a publicly accessible server, the source code to any of your application code that invokes the kernel directly or embeds the kernel as a component of a larger application or invokes the kernel through an RPC or remote service call for example using SOAP.

If you cannot open source your application/component you must obtain a commercial license from us to distribute the 1060 NetKernel.

Yes. We require that remotely accessible code, or software as service as it is sometimes called, is equivalent to a full redistribution and so the usual distribution terms apply. Therefore you may freely use the 1060 NetKernel if you release the source code to your service - if you do not wish to release your source then you must obtain a closed license.

Yes. Even though the service is private you are allowing access from a different location and so this is a distribution. You are required to provide the source code to your application on a publicly accessible server, or obtain a commercial license.

Yes.

No, you are free to use the 1060 NetKernel on as many machines as you wish at a single physical site. However if you require support you may need to purchase support licenses for each installation - please see the support packages for details.

Open Source

Yes and No.

The license requires that any component or application that is distributed with the 1060 NetKernel must be licensed under an OSI open source license. This is not viral it just says a redistribution must be open-source or else a commercial license must be obtained.

However if the 1060 NetKernel is modified, or combined with any other software either embedded or as part of service, then a distribution of the derivative software must be licensed under the 1060 Public License. This is a self-propagating license requirement similar to the self-propagation of the GPL.

The 1060 Public License is a commercial open-source license. It is designed to permit free use but place strong constraints on closed source redistributions. A license for closed source redistribution can be purchased from www.1060research.com

We believe that open source code offers many benefits over closed source code in particular for infrastructural software technologies - we believe the GPL should be recognized as largely responsible for this. We also recognize that for pragmatic reasons much commercial code will remain closed since it implements trade secrets or codifies business relationships.

We required a license that maintained the spirit of the GPL but also allowed us the opportunity to issue commercial licenses for those parties that cannot conform to a fully open source model. In addition we wanted usage terms (1a) that mandate open source technology - this requirement will have limited effect on the open source community's use of the software but will hinder commercial users who have not purchased a license.

Furthermore, we required a license that was compatible with the current growth of 'software as service'. The GPL has a traditional view of a software application and libraries, we wanted to clarify the usage and distribution terms for both the traditional application and the remote software service models.

We are exploring the relationship between the 1060 Public License and the GPL. Both make requirements about the licensing for a combined work. Until this is clarified the 1060 Public License is the only license under which you may redistribute a combined work. The relevant part of the GPL states:

"This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Library General Public License instead of this License."

There are many open source models and philosophies. In practical terms we believe open source is the best model for developing robust, secure, trustworthy software. We believe open source provides the consumer with an assurance of openness from proprietary lock-in. We believe widespread propagation of a common open software infrastructure benefits everyone. We are pragmatic, we summarize our position as: If you're open we're free. If you cannot open your source code you need a license from us. We believe this position is to the maximum benefit of all.

There are several well known companies that offer closed licenses to their open source technologies. For example: Sleepycat and the Berkley DB, MySQL and the MySQL DB and GhostScript. We believe this will become an increasingly common model for commercial software companies.

We have not yet requested certification of the 1060 Public License. We are not clear whether our usage term 1a, which states that a licensee can freely execute open source components but cannot execute closed source components unless certified by us, is in accordance with the OSI. Not to be OSI certified may look hypocritical but we are also a commercial concern with a business model that is expressed through our license. We would very much like to receive OSI certification since we believe our license is closely in spirit with the OSI.

Visit www.opensource.org

It turns out that there's no pleasantries permitted in law ;-) We don't want the license to be mean spirited and we hope you'll find it a generous proposition. However the lawyers insist that legal agreements are unambiguous and clear and so that means terse and sometimes hard-nosed language.

Software patents are increasingly recognized throughout the world as legitimate intellectual property rights and we have no choice but to respect them. Unfortunately software patents may prove to be disproportionately restrictive to the open source community since the source code is available and can be contested by a patent holder - unlike closed source which may be equally infringing but is not observable.

The open source community can best defend itself against patents by frequently publishing in the public domain as many software inventions as possible. An invention that has been publicly published cannot be protected by a future patent claim. In the case of a patent that has already been filed, the community can help by seeking to find prior art (previously published public knowledge) that defeats the claims of the patent.

For commercial reasons we must reserve the right to apply for patents in NetKernel technologies. Such patents as are granted will be used for defensive purposes both for ourselves and the broader open source community. We will create an open patent pool that will be free to license for legitimate open source projects.